“The uptake of Erasmus places by Irish third level students has increased by almost a fifth, new figures released by the European Commission have shown. Ireland had the fourth highest increase in out-bound students of more than 30 participating European countries last year …” (more)
[Genevieve Carbery, Irish Times, 8 May]
“American universities – whose grads often owe six-figure debts that can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, and that can even be charged against their Social Security checks – are increasingly engaging in the (legal) tactic of refusing to provide transcripts to grad schools or employers as a means of extorting payment out of students who get behind …” (more)
[Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing, 8 May]
“Joris talks to an academic about the pressure on students, the social skills of quants and the problem with financial models …” (more)
[Joris Luyendijk, Guardian, 8 May]
“Two more student protesters, brothers Christopher and Andrew Hilliard, have been acquitted of charges of violent disorder relating to the anti-fees demo of 9 December 2010. The unanimous verdicts, which the jury took only two hours to reach, came hot on the heels of similar not-guilty verdicts for three other defendants …” (more)
[Nadine El-Enany, Guardian, 8 May]
“Logistics and institutional issues: how do you find time for it, where (if anywhere) should it go on your c.v., and how should tenure and promotion committees evaluate it? At least, this is what the audience questions were almost exclusively about when I spoke about blogging at my faculty’s ‘research retreat’ on Friday …” (more)
[Rohan Maitzen, Novel Readings, 5 May]
“Amnesty International has welcomed the drawing up of a draft charter for human rights and code of conduct by the National University of Ireland (NUI) for Irish third-level institutions operating in countries with poor human rights records …” (more)
[Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 8 May]
“What’s the talk of education? The bleak future of the Irish university. ‘The managerial types running universities need to remember they are there to provide a service to the academic staff and students …’” (more)
[Irish Times, 8 May]
“Back in 1978, I sat my final undergraduate examinations in Trinity College Dublin. In those days TCD had its exams in September, thus ruining everyone’s summer, and the last paper I tackled was on a Saturday towards the end of the month …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 8 May]
“Ireland was known the world over as the ‘island of saints and scholars’, and we traded on that reputation for many years. How often did teachers report receiving a new pupil from the UK or the US but, after a while, advise the parents that their child should drop back a class? …” (more)
[Seán Cottrell, Irish Times, 8 May]
“The real scandal in Tipperary. The Tipperary school which refused admission to a pregnant 16 year old has drawn much criticism. Last week, Minister for Education, Ruairí Quinn made headline news when he joined the chorus of criticism …” (more)
[Irish Times, 8 May]
“Controversy over the involvement of Ireland’s Royal College of Surgeons in Bahrain has prompted new guidelines on human rights for third-level colleges with operations abroad …” (more)
[Mary Fitzgerald, Irish Times, 8 May]
“I find myself in a dilemma about David Willetts’s latest pronouncement about free access on-line to publicly funded research – not unlike my dilemma about podcasts, I guess. There is certainly something in what he says: the public purse funds pricey research which then ends up being published in journals that even the richest of UK universities can barely afford to buy …” (more)
[Mary Beard, A Don's Life, 7 May]
“Earlier this year, the House of Lords published a long and detailed report on the outwardly rather dry topic of government chief scientific advisers. This 100-page report was based on almost 400 pages of evidence and made some important recommendations about how scientific evidence should be acted upon in public policymaking …” (more)
[Fiona Millar, Guardian, 7 May]
“Competition is wonderful. A Stanford professor, Sebastian Thrun, starts his own online instructional company and gets a six-digit number of participants. No doubt worried about the implications of this, Stanford teams with Princeton, Michigan and Penn to offer free online courses …” (more)
[Richard Vedder, New York Times, 6 May]
