LARGE CORPORATIONS ARE providing financial support to Irish universities in multiple ways – from funding research centres, establishing professorships in the company name, financing campus infrastructure and providing scholarships for students. Big business is an increasingly influential presence across Ireland’s education sector.
 
This trend is often framed by both government and industry as a net positive for Irish society. Private funding is seen as a way to build closer relationships between universities, industry and government – ensuring that teaching and research activities target the same ‘strategic goals’.

Private funding is also viewed as a way to compensate for the funding gap in education, which was estimated by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science in 2022 to be €307 million per year. Within this context, academic-industry partnerships have taken centre stage in Ireland. But to date, little attention has been paid to the multiple risks associated with industry funding of universities identified by international research.   

Why do corporations invest in universities?  

Extensive analysis has mapped the corporate influence of science to show how major industries, including those in tobacco, chemical, pharmaceutical industries and energy, have strategically funded research to delay critical progress, obscure industry harms and oppose government regulation in areas such as public health and climate change. Research highlights how private sector funding of education can bias research and shape students’ perceptions of the industry.
 
Evidence shows how large corporations have embedded themselves and their goals within university campuses and curricula – entangling their profit-driven agendas with the public good mission of education. One major risk of this is that academic areas that are not perceived as having commercial value are underfunded and marginalised in many education systems.

This is already happening in Ireland; consider that in 2020, the majority of industry-funded research in Ireland focused on Health, Engineering, Technology and Natural Sciences, amounting to €39.1 million, while the humanities only received €200,000.

There is strong evidence that the ‘corporate capture’ of universities and academic research intends to legitimise corporate-friendly policies and reduce regulatory constraints on big business. Decades of research on universities in the United States, Canada, the UK and Australia shows that since the 1970s, the fossil fuel industry lobby has been strategically funding teaching and research agendas that promote climate denial, obstruct environmental action and direct attention to narrow technical fixes to social problems.

With the government planning for industry funding to double in Ireland by 2030, this raises the question — are similar corporate strategies unfolding here?  How can Ireland protect against the mega-corporations of aviation, tech, pharma, finance and agri-food strategically investing in the education landscape to promote and obscure the harms of their activities?

New analysis on industry funding in Irish universities

These questions were among the key issues we investigated in a recent research paper published in PublicPolicy.ie in which we reviewed the current extent and dynamics of private sector funding in education, based on publicly available data. Our work offers a snapshot of how large corporations invest in universities across Ireland, highlighting concerns about potential conflicts of interest.

We also highlighted the lack of transparency surrounding industry funding in Irish universities. Although some sources, such as the HEA’s databases and KTI’s Annual Knowledge Transfer Survey, provide a general overview of the funding landscape, there is a lack of granularity on the types of industries, organisations and types of investment being made. 
 
If the public and academic community cannot access clear information about where, how, and why corporations fund universities, then we are left to accept it uncritically, despite international evidence that such investment often serves corporate interests at the expense of the public good. The many crises facing Ireland today, including the housing crisis and a precarious economic system that is over-reliant on US industry, require transformative social, cultural and economic change. Transformation will not be achieved through narrow silver bullet solutions, the kinds of approaches often promoted by corporations, where a new technology will come to the market and ‘solve’ humanity’s grand challenges.

Irish society is facing systemic vulnerabilities associated with housing insecurity, climate destabilisation, and growing economic, educational and health disparities among communities and households struggling to thrive. To contribute to addressing these issues, our universities need to be publicly funded and independent from corporate influence.

Another danger of industry funding of Irish universities is the inability to uphold the integrity and independence of academic institutions. If Ireland’s education landscape continues to be shaped by profit-seeking objectives and market-driven priorities, students and staff will continue to be thwarted in their efforts to work toward the changes that are so desperately needed for a more just, healthy, and peaceful Irish society.  
 
The extent and dynamics of industry funding in Irish universities and its potential to narrow the priorities of education require additional scrutiny and discussion. New processes of transparency and accountability are also urgently needed across Ireland’s education sector so that university staff, students and the Irish public are involved in decisions on when and where it might be appropriate for Ireland’s public universities to accept industry funding.

And to maintain the public good mission of Irish universities, public funding must be increased so that educational institutions can retain their integrity and focus on co-creating a more hopeful future for Ireland and the world. 

Jennie C Stephens is Professor of Climate Justice at the ICARUS Climate Research Centre, Maynooth University. Conchúr Ó Maonaigh is a postdoctoral researcher based in the Department of Geography, Maynooth University.