The grin of the Cheshire cat: European studies in Irish universities 1974-2014

The fortunes of European Studies in Irish universities have tended to reflect the experience of Ireland as a member-state of the EU. At the outset, the need to prepare graduates for careers in EU institutions and,more broadly, for occupations directly affected by the EU such as law, banking, business, farming and tourism, was met by a wide range of courses (BA and MA) at most Irish universities. These had a strong vocational mission and were supported by EU-funded schemes such as TEMPUS, Erasmus and, later, Jean Monnet, all of which stimulated transnational mobility and the subsequent standardisation of curricula through the adoption of credit transfers (ECTS) under the ‘Bologna process’. In all these developments, Ireland ‘punched above its weight’ in a context where it was basking in economic success due largely to favourable trade and inwards investment conditions. More recently, however, and especially since the demise of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ public opinion has been much more circumspect as expressed in negative referendum results and, most recently as a reaction to, the management of the economy by a ‘troika’ of external agencies. Today, European Studies programmes have been the victim of public disillusionment with the EU, and tighter budgets have resulted in a ‘cannibalisation’ of these programmes by their constituent disciplines so that the label “European Studies” is reduced to a fig-leaf barely concealing an underlying fragmentation into more traditional mono-disciplinary degrees.