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The 2008 global financial crisis cast a long shadow over Ireland's higher education and research system. The IMF said Ireland experienced an ‘unprecedented economic correction’, while Ireland's National Economic and Social Development Office said Ireland was beset by five different crises: a banking crisis, a fiscal crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis and a reputational crisis. Despite a return to growth, these circumstances provide the best explanation for the policy choices being undertaken as key actors struggle to sustain the publicly funded mass system, and reassert the country's position as a globally competitive knowledge society attractive to mobile capital and skilled labour. Whatever the outcome, it is unlikely that public funding for higher education will return to levels previously enjoyed. This paper examines the background and policy challenges confronting the government and higher education, and discusses the role of higher education researchers in helping shape options. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper provides an example of how a collaborative research engagement with an advanced technology start-up company has had considerable research and educational benefits to the host academic institution. The start-up company had developed a novel microblast based coating technology for use in the medical device and aerospace sectors. After an initial collaborative research project, the company relocated into the university, renting space in a business incubator unit and also in an engineering laboratory specialising in Surface Engineering. This paper provides an overview of the student impact of the collaborative research activities and details how Irish Government supports facilitated this engagement. As a result of this collaboration to-date 5 post-graduate students are working on projects directly associated with the start-up company and 6 journal papers have been published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Irish inter-institutional virtual learning environments ( VLEs) open dataset stems from ongoing work with a rolling longitudinal survey of students' usage of VLEs which has been ongoing in 12 higher education institutions since 2008. The project has collected over 21 000 student responses to date through the growth of an extended network of educational technologists collaborating from multiple institutions. The survey instrument uses a common set of questions, and on condition of anonymity, the participating institutions pool their data to compare and contrast the results. The large representation of the data collected at national level opens the possibility of international participation to add a cross-national dimension to the data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]