The OECD in Irish higher education : a study of two policy reviews, 1962-64 and 2003-04.

The thesis is an interpretive account and analysis ofthe influence of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on higher education policy in Ireland. Documentary sources associated with two OECD reviews are used to explore the roots of policy changes in Ireland's higher education system The first, a report on technician training in 1964, became the catalyst for the creation of a binary higher education system The second, a 2004 report on the financing and governance of higher education, has become the source document of contemporary policy changes in the system The OECD's higher education agenda has itself evolved over the decades. The study examines different phases of that evolution and how they impacted on both the content and the transmission of its influence on national policies. Moreover, a convergence between OECD policies and its peer review system with those of the European Union has greatly strengthened the agenda setting capacity of the OECD in Ireland. Hence the thesis is a study of the politics of policy formation in one sector during two separate episodes of change. The study looks at the often -tortuous routes taken to design reform programmes in tune with OECD recommendations and the long-term results of the measures adopted. What emerges is a case study of an important trend in contemporary policy development. While issues are locally defined, the space for an exclusively national competence in education matters has eroded so that policy initiatives have taken on a supranational dimension in which the OECD is the pre-eminent player