A sit in at the NCAD college boardroom this week (top)

As academics in Ireland and those working abroad, we write to express our solidarity with the students currently taking action at the National College of Art and Design [Dublin. We are concerned by the continued corporatisation that has consumed higher education in recent years. This has led to shortsighted management decisions based on little more than a drive to ‘balance the books’.

We urgently need another model of what higher education might be – one guided by the pursuit of learning rather than the pursuit of profit, driven by radical enquiry rather than bogus metrics, and committed to creating a space in which everyone who teaches, works and learns is afforded the entitlement and responsibility of equality. The students who are now taking action at NCAD, like those elsewhere in Europe right now, are committed to exploring the possibility of that other model. We give them our support at this time.

Mairead Enright, University of Kent

Eoin O’Mahony, St. Patrick’s College / DCU

Dr Patrick Bresnihan, Maynooth University

Zoë Lawlor, University of Limerick

Dr Jones Irwin, St Patrick’s College / DCU

Dr Sinead Kennedy, Maynooth University

Dr James Carr, University of Limerick

Dr Kylie Jarrett, Maynooth University

Dr Audrey Bryan, St Patrick’s College / DCU

Bryan Wall, University College Cork

Aggelos Panayiotopoulos, University of Limerick

Dr Charles Travis, Trinity College Dublin

Dr Henry Silke, DCU

Dr Rory Hearne, Maynooth University

Dr Gavan Titley, Maynooth University

Rory Rowan, University of Zurich

Illan Wall, University of Warwick

Aileen O’Carroll, Maynooth University.