Ninth Level Ireland

“Over recent months a significant number of commentators – in the media, in politics, from industry and elsewhere – have suggested that major reform in Irish higher education is needed. Furthermore, the Minister for Education and Science has, as we know, established a strategic review process for higher education. Most of the discussion that this has generated has been about the reform of structures, and in particular the possibility of rationalisation; this has been covered in previous posts in this blog. In fact, the time is right for considering reform – including some quite radical reform – of the Irish higher education system; but as in all questions of strategic reform, it is doubtful whether this should start with structures …” (more)

[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 29 March]

“Students in University College Dublin will stage a ‘university shutdown’ tomorrow in protest at the reintroduction of third-level fees. This will involve boycotting all classes and academic matters for 24 hours, as well as staging protests across the campus for the duration of the action. A referendum deciding on the course of action was passed by 82% of students in the college. It is understood that a rally will also be held on the day, which is expected to attract thousands of students. UCD staff will not be striking on the same day, after the cancellation of the planned national one-day stoppage …” (more)

[Jennifer Bray, Tribune, 29 March]

“Education minister Batt O’Keeffe is finalising a number of ‘outstanding details’ before presenting his preferred structure for the reintroduction of third-level fees to cabinet. A spokesman for the minister said he would bring his report on student contribution to cabinet ‘very shortly’. Sources believe it will be completed by the end of this week. However, no date has been formally set for the publication of the report until the fine-tuning is completed. Department of Education officials are preparing a report of various fees structures and O’Keeffe will indicate to his fellow ministers his preferred option and ask for them to support it. A spokesman for the minister said the final recommendation would be based on ‘the four key principles of equity, access, participation and affordability’ …” (more)

[Martha Kearns, Sunday Business Post, 29 March]

“Five hundred university leaders who gathered in Prague this month called on European governments to invest in higher education during the economic and financial crisis. Meeting at the fifth convention of higher education institutions, organised by the European University Association, the rectors said universities had a key role as a ‘motor’ for economic recovery by providing the research-based education at all levels needed to promote creativity and innovation. EUA President Professor Jean-Marc Rapp told the meeting European universities were a long-term investment in the continent’s future …” (more)

[University World News, 29 March]

“All new entrants to the public sector face the prospect of losing the traditionally generous defined benefit pension under a radical plan being considered by the government that would save the exchequer billions of euro in pension contributions. The plan, which would see new recruits being shifted to less generous defined contribution pension schemes commonplace in the private sector, would prove controversial with the public sector unions. They regard defined contribution pensions as ‘yellow pack’, because the final pension is dependent on investment returns, compared to defined benefit arrangements, where the employer, in this case the government, takes all the risk. The plans do not seek to alter in any way the pension entitlements of current workers or those already retired …” (more)

[Emmet Oliver and Shane Coleman, Tribune, 29 March]

“After a lengthy softening-up process, Batt O’Keeffe, the education minister, has achieved a grudging consensus that it’s time for students to pay for their third-level education again. There have been no fees since 1996, when they were axed by the rainbow coalition. O’Keeffe said last week that he will bring proposals to cabinet ‘very shortly’. Leaks from the Department of Education indicate that he will be recommending an Australian-style graduate tax, with students having to repay the cost of their education once in employment. Another feature of the Australian system — a discount if you pay in full up-front — is expected to be included. This would generate €70m a year straight away, which would appeal to the cash-starved Department of Finance …” (more)

[John Burns, Sunday Times, 29 March]

“Necessary frontline health staff and teachers can be appointed this year despite the Government’s decision to freeze all appointments elsewhere in the public service, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan has announced. A ban on permanent and temporary recruitment – and all promotions and regrading – will be enforced until the end of 2010 in the Civil Service, local authorities, semi-state companies, the Garda and the Defence Forces, the Department of Finance confirmed. But it rejected charges that the move was an embargo. ‘An embargo would imply that no filling of vacancies whatsoever could take place. The Minister will have the authority to allow for the filling of some vacancies in very exceptional circumstances.’ Staff can be redeployed from departments and other State bodies to where they are needed …” (more)

[Mark Hennessy, Irish Times, 28 March]

“It is clear that higher education students are going to be asked to contribute to the cost of their education. Although this will create some social problems, it is not unreasonable because higher education adds considerably to the eventual earning power of most of those who engage with it. Moreover, while it makes sense for primary and secondary education to be free because everyone benefits from it, only 60 per cent of each age cohort enter higher education and some 50 per cent secure a qualification. It does not seem equitable that the half of the population who do not benefit from this experience should, through taxes, be required to help enhance the earning power of the other half of the population …” (more)

[Garret Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 28 March]

“A Native American chief has appealed to NUI Galway to return the world’s oldest known birch-bark canoe to his community in Canada. The ‘Grandfather Akwiten’ canoe had spent almost two centuries in Ireland before it was sent temporarily to Canada two years ago by NUI Galway (NUIG) for conservation and subsequent exhibition. The canoe remains in Canada. The 180-year-old craft, which was donated to the university in the mid-19th century, is an ‘iconic’ and ‘powerful symbol’ of the Native Americans’ way of life, according to Chief Candice Paul of the St Mary’s First Nation Wolastokwiyik (Maliseet) community of New Brunswick. However, he says it suffered more than 150 years of ‘isolation and neglect’ and ‘served primarily as a home for pigeons in an institution dedicated to geological collections’ at the university …” (more)

[Lorna Siggins, Irish Times, 28 March]

“What’s the point of running a university computer lab when all the students bring laptops anyway? That’s a question that schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90 percent. Schools like the University of Virginia have concluded that the time has come to dismantle the community computer labs and put that money to more productive uses …” (more)

[Nate Anderson, Ars Technica, 27 March]

“An angry Brian O’Shea has increased his already high levels of vitriol towards Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe, describing the Minister’s refusal to initiate WIT’s submission for university status as ‘outrageous’. The Labour TD said that the ‘woefully inadequate and downright insulting response’ by the Minister was adding insult to injury regarding the Government’s handling of the WIT bid. Earlier this week, the Minister stated that ‘there are no plans to advance any of the current applications for university status before the strategy group completes its work’. And that work won’t may not even completed by the end of this year. ‘We are being bundled with later applications and told to be patient while yet another prevarication process is spun out,’ said Deputy O’Shea …” (more)

[Dermot Keyes, Munster Express, 27 March]

Deputy Brian O’Shea: “In February 2006 Waterford Institute of Technology made a formal application to the Department of Education and Science in pursuit of university status. The submission embraces constituent campuses throughout the south east. There was an expectation by the institute at the time that a body of national and international education experts would be set up to adjudicate the merits of the institute’s case and then report to the Higher Education Authority. More than three years later, I tabled a parliamentary question last Tuesday, asking the Minister for Education and Science to request the Higher Education Authority to recommend, as provided for under section 9.1 of the Universities Act 1997, the membership of a body to include international experts and national experts for appointment by the Government. This body would advise the Higher Education Authority whether Waterford Institute of Technology should be established as the university of the south east …” (more)

[Dáil Éireann, 26 March]

“Senator David Norris: … I understand the levy will be applied to the personal remuneration of all college employees, regardless of contract or grade, from 1 March. The Government’s argument was that this would compensate them for the alleged advantage of public sector workers in terms of security of employment and pension benefits. A number of points need to be made regarding the anomalies affecting researchers. Researchers do not enjoy any of the benefits enjoyed by public sector workers, nor do they receive any overtime pay, despite the fact that a great deal of their work is done at night, after normal hours and at weekends. Most researchers are on fixed-term contracts with no guarantee of renewal. There are no defined pay scales and salaries are at the discretion of their supervisor rather than the college or Government. In other words, the instability of employment typically prevents them from enjoying the benefits of pension contributions over the longer term …” (more)

[Seanad Éireann, 26 March]

“Students yesterday protested to highlight their belief that the PSNI was a major cause of the Holylands disturbances on St. Patrick’s Day. At 5.00pm yesterday (Thursday) evening, approximately twelve students lined the main gates to Queen’s University. A small gathering of students observed the protest. Three police officers also appeared to oversee events. The demonstration, organised by the Socialist Worker Student Society, blamed both the police and the University for what happened on St. Patrick’s Day …” (more)

[Brendan Hughes, The Gown, 27 March]

“By now we have become accustomed to the parade of disaster stories from financial institutions, and on the whole we now know how they got themselves – and us – into the major messes we have witnessed. But now the question is occasionally being asked whether higher education institutions will also start to hit the headlines for these reasons. There have been plenty of stories about deficits, and some of these look serious. But the first major crisis story in Ireland is from Waterford, where the Institute of Technology has hit major financial problems. According to a recent article in the US Chronicle of Higher Education, a large number of American institutions are in crisis, with budget cuts and lay-offs. But the writer indicates that this is not all down to the bad economic environment; many of them took poor decisions during the good times that have now come to haunt them …” (more)

[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 27 March]

“One of the leading organisers of next Wednesday’s Financial Fools’ Day protests was last night suspended from his role as Professor of Anthropology at the University of East London, on full pay. Chris Knight, who has been a lecturer in anthropology at the university since 1989, and professor since 2000, was informed of his suspension yesterday evening, and was told it was because of an interview he gave to a newspaper this week in which he is quoted as ‘inciting criminal action, specifically violence against policemen and women and damage to banking institutions’. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Knight was pictured with a placard bearing the slogan ‘Eat the bankers’, and quoted as saying: ‘If they [the police] want violence, they’ll get it’ …” (more)

[Richard Rogers, Guardian, 27 March]

“Spanish society should know that the students of what is called the ‘anti-Bologna movement’, far from being anti-system fanatics or uninformed adolescents, are, at this moment, the only members of the university community that have the lucidity, the responsibility, the courage and the generosity sufficient to defend unyieldingly against the University’s substitution by quite a different thing altogether, to defend the very concept and the conditions of existence of a real system of higher education. They are the only ones interested, it seems, in the survival and support of an institution that conserves the ‘University’ in anything more than its name …” (more)

[de.indymedia.org, 26 March]

“The rate at which students default on federal student loans has risen for a second year in a row, from 5.2 percent to 6.9 percent, preliminary data from the Education Department indicate. In all, 231,659 students who entered repayment on their student loans in the 2007 fiscal year defaulted within the next two years, the draft data show. As usual, the rate was higher for students who attended for-profit institutions (11.3 percent) than for students who attended public colleges (6.1 percent) or private colleges (3.8 percent). However, the rate at which students defaulted in all three sectors increased by a similar amount: between 1.3 and 1.6 percentage points …” (more)

[Kelly Field, Chronicle of Higher Education, 26 March]

“… One year ago, the American Journal of Psychiatry published an editorial calling for recognition of internet addiction as a ‘common disorder.’ A crop of almost surreal newspaper articles followed, with titles such as ‘Net Addicts Mentally Ill, Top Psychiatrist Says.’ But the response from our medical and mental-health communities was closer to a collective yawn. True, a skeptical reply came from the Harvard Mental Health Letter, whose editor, Michael Craig Miller, warned that it’s ‘probably not helpful to invent new terms to describe problems as old as human nature.’ Other than him, few experts seemed to notice — much less mind — that the flagship journal of American psychiatry was arguing quite seriously that overuse of the internet might be a psychiatric illness, on a par with, say, schizophrenia. The anniversary of the editorial seems like a good moment to revisit its controversial claims and see whether they have any merit …” (more)

[Christopher Lane, Psychology Today, 25 March]

“Amid all the focus on the flood of different reports on the Irish economy, and the battle between the slash and burn brigade and the stimulants, the new Science Foundation Ireland strategy on Powering the Smart Economy seems to have slipped under the radar of many. This is surprising, as it remains probably the only sector of Irish public spending now that seems to be ring fenced against spending cuts and, of course, it is regarded by the official view as being the centrepiece of trying to position Ireland for economic success once we get ourselves out of the current mess. Yet, as with so many of the sacred cows of Celtic Tiger Ireland that few dared criticise (stimulating a booming economy, opening the flood gates of credit, establishing new agencies for any problem that emerged, national planning that was simply a list of goodies to be funded), current policy towards R&D does little to stimulate confidence that it can achieve the lofty goals it has set for itself. A more critical examination is greatly overdue …” (more)

[Peadar Kirby, progressive-economy@tasc, 26 March]