Rumours of Sabbats for next year....

cambridge wrote: »

It may come as a shock to some of you, but Irish Third level education is on the brink of collapse. It closely mirrors the rise and fall of the Irish economy. 50 years ago we were just a little **** hole on the edge of Europe (ignoring Iceland) with little going for itself except the arts and agri(aqua)culture. With the flooding of European and transatlantic investment we quickly shot up and acquired an unsustainable standard of living. As the circus tent fell down around us, we were found out for being full of ****, dependent on foreign investment brought here by tax breaks.

Irish Third Level education is following the same trend. With EU and TA money we invested in universities and colleges, dropped fees, and made third level education a playground for lazy 18-22 year olds. There were no checks put in to measure the quality of the investment, we just kept throwing money at it and churned out sub-par after sub-par graduates. Irish universities and colleges are littered with public servant, executive officers, administrative people that do about 1 persons work amongst 10 of them. We have the highest paid lecturers and academic staff in Europe (and the world ignoring USA etc.) but not one top 100 world institution.

We have arrived at a situation where every teenager feels its their right and their entitlement to attend some sort of college, studying some sort of course. Nobody seems to have accounted for who is paying for the courses, and what benefit they will have for their careers. We seem to have brain washed ourselves into thinking that as long as you're 'studying' you're doing something worthwhile. We seem to have ignored the fact that someone people don't belong in university and tried to implement some kind of 'equality' ideal by making dumb courses for dumb people.

The rug is about to be pulled out from underneath us. The current first years will be paying full fees by the time they reach 4th year, if not before. Funding for post-grad education is being cut, fewer people will be doing Phds and fewer people doing Mscs. This in my opinion, is a good thing.

I have a vision for UL. UL was built on the principle of being pragmatic, versatile and dynamic, able to cater for changes in the environment in the pursuit of the ideal of producing high calibre, highly employable, high quality graduates. I want to return to those ideals.

The university has stretched itself beyond its means. There are too many students, too many staff members, too many branches on the tree. It needs to reign itself in. It needs to focus on the high yield areas. It needs to become more selective in the student it enrols, more stringent on the criteria it uses to pass students and more elitist in its awarding of 1st class degrees.

UL needs to access the strengths and weaknesses of its client base (young people who choose to go to university). It needs to attract the intelligent, and the energetic, the motivated and the driven. It needs to stop the lazy, the stupid and the timewasters at the door and not let them in.

Therefore I'd recommend the university opt out of the CAO system and bring in a joint Leaving Cert/Interview system. It needs to downsize its intake in its core courses by about 30% and drop the non-important courses completely. UL has to become the most difficult university in Ireland to get into. UL has to recruit between 5 and 10% of their students for all courses from North American and Asia. These students bring in even more fees, a work ethic that complements the Irish attitude (they work hard but burn out, Irish people work too little and never get ruthless).

The exact important courses needs to be worked out in greater detail later. But essentially there needs to be a focus on professional courses, courses that are in high demand now and in the future, courses that are academically rigorous and either cater for international appeal or focus on our own heritage. We must not forget our roots and where we came from.

For example
Business, finance and accounting courses stay.
Public admin, HR mngt courses should go back to ITs.

Law, Medicine, Architecture, Engineering stay.
Wood work, metal work, technical subjects back to ITs.

Irish dance, music, singing, orchestral, etc. stay.
Sports science back to IT

Pharmaceutical science plus others stay
Other sciences back to IT

Computer science can stay (most of it).

What needs to change in all the courses is the implementation of fully vigorous and obligatory broad curriculum courses. People from EVERY course need to take courses in one foreign language, IT, numerical and literary skills. Irish graduates have the benefit of being native English speakers (the most important language in the world) but lose out to other Europeans because we tend to be very mono or bi(irish)lingual. We need to enforce students to learn at least one foreign language, Russian, Chinese, Italian, Spanish, any of them.

It is frankly appalling that some people can receive a third level qualification without having advanced level numerical and literacy skills. All students will be forced to take practical mathematics (mostly stats) courses and English comprehension courses. Never again will an UL student put an apostrophe in the wrong place.

It is my vision to have Wednesdays free in all courses for Broad curriculum to take place. This will involve tutorials, workshops, student let presentations and projects. All students will be mixed in with others from different departments, different years and different cultures/nationalities. This will ensure that UL graduates will be well versed in team work, project work, capable of working with all types of personalties and cultures, develop their professionalism, self confidence and other skills (IT, presentations, public speaking, leadership, time management, the list goes on).

Other changes I will introduce will be the introduction of course credit for athletic, exercise and sporting performance. Irish obesity levels are soaring, people are getting fatter by the year. One of the most important skills you can learn at college is gaining the knowledge of how to eat, exercise correctly and be healthy. People will be assessed every 3 months on their 100m times, their vertical leap, their bench, squat and deadlift numbers. They will be given individual programmes and goals. If they continuously miss their deadlines they will be penalised academically, if they fail to meet final scores they can't graduate until certain fitness levels are reached. Being healthy, fit and active is no longer a nice bonus, it is an absolute necessity for society.

Students will also be be given credit for sporting activity, like winning/participating in inter-varsities, all students will be required to join one club and one soc and be active. There will be no exceptions, even people with medical conditions will be required to do something.

As I hinted at in the beginning, I will campaign for better integration with the actual work force, the companies, groups, organisations and businesses students will hopefully aim to work for. All students will take 8 week placements every year, in an approved organisation. The same organisations will be invited to sponsor modules in the respective courses. e.g. google will be invited to sponsor, provide the staff for and endorse a module on cloud computing etc. Google will get the benefit of having students start part of their work training in college rather than work place and college will save money as well as get professional endorsement. PWC, Intel, Accenture, Morgan stanley, all these big multinational companies who have international reputations and proven track record of training graduates will jump at the chance to spend just a little bit of money to get the ball rolling for potential graduates. Successful enterpreneurs will also be part of the syllabus, at least yearly someone like Michael O'Leary will be invited into go give key note speech and consultation on how to improve the college.

Finally, I propose that all 4 year courses become 3 years and that instead of 2 long terms we move to 3 terms. This is the kicker though, terms will run from sept to sept, with month of between terms (no long summer holidays anymore). Some of the the summer term will be taken up by individual projects and work placement so staff members will still have a nice chunk of time for research.

That's my basic idea on how to change the way undergraduate education is taking place in Ireland, a discussion on post-graduate education is for another time. If these implementations are made early and vigorously, I can almost guarantee UL will become the premier university in Ireland from a student and employer point of view. People from all over america and middle east will be queuing up to get in, as will international students from Europe. UL students who learn in this environment will beat the socks off all opponents in graduate programme competitions.

Like this post if you like my ideas and would consider hearing more.

cambridge wrote: »

This is how things work in the US, how it works in Ox-bridge. What do you want ul to be like? MIT or LIT?

cambridge wrote: »

Delta Kilo wrote: »

When you put your name on the forum I will, until then you are Cambridge, an anonymous person, so I don't really care.

i am a user of this forum. the rules on this forum are designed to protect said users on this forum. you do no understand the rules, you are infracting the rules. edit your post.

Always will be room for someone with your knowledge, honesty and acumen on my team Ginge.

Not sure how I feel about that