“Last month the Irish Higher Education Authority (HEA) published an analysis of the last five years of student applications to the country’s universities and institutes of technology. This revealed some interesting trends …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 21 May]
“I should start this post by declaring that I have never been a smoker. When in my youth all around me were smoking, I somehow avoided it. I tried it of course, it just didn’t do anything for me …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 14 May]
“On a recent visit to Ireland, I had a conversation with four academics from three different universities, and I asked them about the code of good governance that applies in Irish higher education ….” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 6 May]
“The issue of university governance is an important one, and merits a serious discussion. I chaired a steering group that was asked to consider the wider recommendations of a group led by the principal of Robert Gordon University, Professor Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, in his review of higher education governance …” (more)
[Robert Smith, Scotsman.com, 1 May]
“I have to tell you that I was, at least at the beginning, a very eager student. I had been working for two years in a bank (yes, I know, these days that’s like saying I was a drug pusher), and then decided to go to university …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 30 April]
“… I actually took a note of what the gentleman said in opening his talk: the new world of higher education, he asserted, is characterised by a much more thorough and ‘deep’ (whatever that means) approach to accountability and risk management. Really? Well actually, yes. He was probably right …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 22 April]
“… For me, ‘knowledge for its own sake’ is a curiously empty formula, suggesting a metaphysical approach to knowledge that accords it importance without apparently knowing why. I believe strongly in the acquisition, discovery and dissemination of knowledge, but not for its own sake …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 16 April]
“As I have suggested previously in this blog, universities can have a hard time with the concept of freedom of speech. On the one hand, it is one of the key liberal intellectual values, and therefore something the academy will want to prize …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 2 April]
“Recently I took a taxi to get to the airport; it doesn’t matter right now where this was. As is often the case, I got into a conversation with the driver. Having discovered what my job is, he told me that he was a graduate of two different universities …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 26 March]
“As readers of this blog will know, I have taken the view for some time that there is room for a new university model within higher education. I am of course not alone in that view …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 12 March]
“Most (though not all) academic research is funded by the taxpayer. Depending on how ambitious this funding is, it allows universities to attract and retain some of the brightest thinkers and innovators …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 5 March]
“In the United States last week, one prominent anthropologist resigned from the National Academy of Sciences in protest at the membership of the Academy of another prominent anthropologist …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 26 February]
“We are obsessed with the structure of our higher eduction system but other areas need reform first. Here’s a little puzzle. If Waterford Institute of Technology is not fit to be a university on its own, why does it become fit if you add a second college, Carlow IT, which is manifestly not as good an institution? …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, Irish Times, 19 February]
“… Of course I must declare an interest, being myself a German-Irish immigrant leading one of Scotland’s universities. But is Professor Baird right? Is it legitimate for a country to expect, maybe insist, that its academic leadership is indigenous? …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 19 February]
“Just when you thought that all students these days are only focused on being respectable and preparing for their careers, along come the masses and occupy a conference centre in Sussex University …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 12 February]
“In the course of a recent conversation if had with a group of students while visiting another town (which I won’t name), I suddenly became aware of the fact that none of them knew anything about a story that had been dominating the news headlines for about two days …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 5 February]
“The state and its agencies must stop their constant interference with a national success story, argues Ferdinand von Prondzynski …” (more)
[Times Higher Education, 24 January]
“The path that takes a young person to a university, or that diverts them from it, starts very early in life. It has been said that the best predictor of higher education success – far better than school examination results – is a person’s post code …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 22 January]
“College lecturers, students, teachers and parents all complain about the Leaving Cert points race. But, until now, successive ministers and colleges have resisted the temptation to break it apart and try something new …” (more)
[Kim Bielenberg, Independent, 16 January]
“As part of the process that will, we are told, produce a newly reconfigured Irish higher education system, the Higher Education Authority (HEA) has produced another document pointing further in the direction of where it would like the system to go …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 17 January]
