Ninth Level Ireland

“Professor Kieran Byrne, who steered the course of Waterford Institute of Technology for 10 years, has fully severed his ties with the college having failed to be re-appointed President amid public controversy over his lavish spending between 2004 and 2011. Within the past fortnight the former president tendered his resignation and retired with immediate effect …” (more)

[Marion O’Mara, Waterford News & Star, 28 July]

“At the end of his tenure, Provost John Hegarty says ‘Stay classy, Trinity’.” (video)

[University Times, Facebook, 28 July]

“The Education Minister Ruairí Quinn has said that introducing bonus points for Leaving Cert Science students could be on the way. Next year marks the first that universities will offer bonus points for higher grades in Leaving Cert Maths …” (more)

[TheJournal.ie, 28 July]

“The Malaysian government signed a strategic partnership with four Irish universities’ schools of medicine in relation to the continued promotion of the study of medicine by Malaysian students in Ireland. The Memorandum of Understanding in higher education was signed by Datuk Ibrahim Bin Ahmad, the Director General of MARA, an agency of the Malaysian Ministry of Rural and Regional Development, and representatives from each of the four schools of medicine in UCC, NUI Galway, UCD and TCD …” (more)

[Trinity College Communications Office, 28 July]

“There are a great many things wrong with the coalition government’s higher education policies. The latest blunder – a focus on fee waivers over bursaries for poorer students – reveals a worrying contradiction. The government says that students should not be put off by higher fees but at the same time say that fee waivers are necessary in order to stop higher fees having a deterrent effect. The problem is this: fee waivers don’t work …” (more)

[Liam Burns, Guardian, 28 July]

“Trinity College Dublin has been awarded a grant of €2.7 million from the Failte Ireland Tourism Capital Investment Programme to revamp the Book of Kells exhibition which attracts 500,000 visitors a year …” (more)

[Library.ie, 28 July]

“Victoria’’s Deakin University is facing a revolt from students and staff over plans to hike parking fees next year by in some cases more than three times. Under the plans announced to staff late on Friday last week, the annual cost of an allocated reserved parking space at the outer suburban Burwood campus in Melbourne would next year jump from $461.50 to $1500 …” (more)

[Andrew Trounson, The Australian, 28 July]

“We have just finished hosting our Classical conference in Cambridge – three days, 400 delegates, so not big in American terms, but big enough for us. Just showing up at a conference is a quite different experience from going to a conference that you’re actually helping to organise. When you’re part of the home team, it’s all a bit of a worry. In particular you’re desperate that every paper, every event will be really good …” (more)

[Mary Beard, A Don's Life, 28 July]

“The US Treasury has warned that if the US debt ceiling, the amount that the country may legally borrow, is not raised by 2 August, the country will not legally be able to pay all its obligations. Republican members of Congress have demanded cuts to the budget as a condition of agreeing to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default …” (more)

[Eugenie Samuel Reich, Nature News, 28 July]

“Yesterday it said that the users of a clippings service infringed newspaper publishers’ copyrights when they clicked on links to view articles on web pages. But a fairly obscure spat over business information has the potential to derail much of the basis of online publishing. People who look at newspaper web pages at work as part of their job could be infringing copyright, it seemed to suggest …” (more)

[Kim Walker, OUT-LAW News, 28 July]

“Offering higher points in the Leaving Certificate for science was one possible way of persuading more students to take subjects in that area, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has said. ‘Yes, I will be looking for that kind of thing’, the Minister told reporters at the MacGill Summer School last night …” (more)

[Deaglán de Bréadún, Irish Times, 28 July]

“Welfare recipients who refuse retraining and education face financial sanctions, Minister for Education Ruairí Quinn has warned. In announcing Solas, the new training and education authority which will replace Fás, he said: ‘The idea that someone can be permanently on the dole and doing nothing [to retrain] is unacceptable’ …” (more)

[Seán Flynn, Irish Times, 28 July]

“The NUI Galway Students’ Union has welcomed a High Court decision to grant the Union of Students in Ireland leave to challenge a change to the student grants system. The proposed changes to the grants would see some Galway students face cuts of more than 60% in their grants this year …” (more)

[Kernan Andrews, Galway Advertiser, 28 July]

“The Croke Park agreement – in which the Government and trade unions agreed industrial peace in return for no redundancies in the public sector – does not create enforceable legal rights for an individual public sector employee, a High Court judge has ruled. Mr Justice Gerard Hogan was giving his judgment on an injunction application by David Holland to restrain Athlone Institute of Technology …” (more)

[Irish Times, 28 July]

“Academics who celebrate ‘indiscipline’ over basic disciplinary competence could be endangering the future of the humanities, scholars from the US and UK have argued. The suggestion was made during a discussion at the British Academy in London last week, titled The Humanities under Threat, which opened a conference organised by the University of Cambridge and Arizona State University …” (more)

[Matthew Reisz, Times Higher Education, 28 July]

“Last week the European Commission announced a budget of €7 billion for research in 2012. This is the largest in the world bar the US National Institutes for Health and Nasa. This fund is part of the Seventh Framework Programme running from 2007 to 2014. Its successor, named Horizon 2020, has a proposed budget of €80 billion, the only major area for increase in the EC budget after 2014 …” (more)

[Conor O'Carroll, Irish Times, 28 July]

“Recently I had an interesting conversation with a young student currently studying at an English university. Two years away from completing his undergraduate studies, he told me that he intended to travel the world and then settle down to a job that would have to pay less than £21,000 – permanently …” (more)

[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 27 July]

“The Croke Park Agreement does not create enforceable legal rights for an individual public sector employee, a High Court judge has ruled. The agreement involved the Government and trade unions agreeing on industrial peace in return for no redundancies in the public sector. Mr Justice Gerard Hogan was giving his judgment on an injunction application by David Holland to restrain Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT), pending the outcome of full legal proceedings …” (more)

[Mary Carolan, Irish Times, 27 July]

“The Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, has said that the Leaving Certificate points system is ‘part of our problem’. Speaking on his arrival at the MacGill Summer School, Mr Quinn said the Higher Education Authority will be working with the National Council for Curriculum Assessment to advance reforms …” (more)

[RTÉ News, 27 July]

“The journalist and writer Anya Kamenetz once said that graduate students are ‘really smart suckers’, and I — as a PhD who teaches at a liberal arts college — couldn’t agree more. It’s my view that higher education in the humanities exists mainly to provide cheap, inexperienced teachers for undergraduates so that a shrinking percentage of tenured faculty members can meet an ever-escalating demand for specialized research …” (more)

[William Pannapacker, Slate, 27 July]