As a consequence of this squeeze on funding, precarious employment has become the camouflage beneath which the delivery of third-level education hides. In 2016, the Cush report calculated that 45% of university lecturing staff were precarious — lacking a full-time permanent contract — and the situation has worsened since then.

Most students, parents, and the wider community are unaware that within any college precarity is endemic, even normalised. Yet, these difficult working conditions for staff impact learning outcomes for students.

Precarious work can take many forms. It means a series of short-term contracts, perhaps multi-year, perhaps annual, perhaps hourly. It can mean working in different departments and even different institutions simultaneously, working with different systems, curriculums and specialisations.

Surprisingly, perhaps, the hourly rate for tutoring at third level is below the rate for secondary school substitute teachers. For many, the future is highly uncertain, with no guarantee that working hours this year will be renewed next year.

The personal impact of precarity can be huge, ranging from in-work poverty to stress and eventually burnout. The low wages and unpredictability of precarious work, often likened to Deliveroo-style contracts can create housing insecurity, delays to starting a family, and grave impacts on health and wellbeing.

The Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT) trade union has surveyed HEI staff members, and found a range of problems, from unmanageable workloads to unpaid sick leave.

The well-kept secret of academic precarity is that university teaching is subsidised by the social welfare system, through partial jobseeker’s benefit or family income supplement. Effectively, precarity is normalised and the exploitation of workers is routine, with the excuse that it is temporary, a prelude to a job, yet in reality it routinely goes on for years, often fruitlessly.

But why do people do it? Why stick at it, if the conditions are so bad?

Many students go to university and are inspired by their chosen path, whether it is in mathematics, sociology, or microbiology. Those who want to pursue a career in research or teaching face an arduous journey, needing a PhD at minimum.

While they are studying, people can be pressured to take on extra teaching to gain experience or support themselves. This work eats into time for research and publishing, activities necessary to be employable yet unpaid for those who are hourly paid or on teaching-only contracts.

After graduation, they often keep going on the same track. Some lucky few find a job swiftly; others end up stuck on the hamster wheel of precarity. Eventually, many leave for jobs elsewhere.

While there’s a limited place for part-time teaching in universities, to give people experience or to draw on special expertise, increasingly universities are under pressure to routinely use part-time teaching to fulfil front-line essential services. Increasingly the gap between delivering a course and how far a budget will stretch is covered by part-time staff.

The proliferation of precarious work is also a concern for university management. Recently they have highlighted the shortfall in state spending. Yet, they are under pressure to expand courses, boost student numbers and climb the international rankings — an impossible ask. This is also an equality issue, as women and minorities are more likely to be trapped in precarious work, and in its most egregious forms, for longer periods of time. Eventually, the reputational damage of endemic precarity will catch up with us.

The next government needs to substantially increase university funding. Ireland lags behind the European average, and this has a real effect on the quality of our education and research: Irish universities generally have a staff-student ratio about one third higher than the EU average. Across the OECD, Ireland has one of the lowest levels of investment in third-level education as a percentage of GDP. Do we really value education in this country? If we do, then we must put an end to a reliance on precarious work to deliver core functions in third-level institutions, create stronger regulations for part-time and temporary work, within universities, education in general, and beyond.7

Investing in universities, in teaching and research, means investing in ourselves. Rather than big splash investments in capital spending or new third-level courses, the State needs to ensure it is properly funding what it is already running — because the current trend is unsustainable.