ARAM and how it's affecting the college

Boston · 21-04-2006 12:56pm #1

I ask could we keep this thread on-topic.

I found out today, completely out of the blue, that my forth year options will likely be cut, because why department went from grand to 700,000 euros in the red as a result of ARAM. I've also heard stories of departments refusing to co operate with each other as a result of ARAM, (maths lectures teaching science and engineerings). In my own department people simple arn't beign replaced when the leave (assistances/ lectures), even if the money is there due to suddenly beign in the red.

So I did a search for information on ARAM and all I could find was bull.

Questions:

What was the system like before ARAM

How does ARAM work

Is the amounth of money a department earns taken into account?

Why is the SU seemingly not doing anything in relations to something which is obviously ****ing over the college, and students?

Nietzschean · 21-04-2006 1:03pm

what is ARAM? sounds like i should be happy i'm finishing up this year

Andrew 83 · 21-04-2006 1:06pm

There's going to be loads about all of this in Trinity News on Tuesday.

Nietzschean · 21-04-2006 1:16pm

can we not get a preview?

Time Magazine · 21-04-2006 1:27pm

The only preview allowed is that ARAM is a big news story

.

ARAM = Academic Resource Allocation Model, pioneered by economics' Prof. John O'Hagan. I don't know why an economics man would sell out his own like that.

Personally I prefer the anagram PDRFRM ("PD REFORM") for it - Physics Department's Re-allocation of Funds Ruthlessly Model.

Boston · 21-04-2006 1:45pm

Ian you are lucky, you know those CS course as part of your Maths degree, you did, well they could be scrapped like others, sicne departments no longer have to play with each other nicely, and anything that cost them money, which they dont' have to provide they can drop, and departments look to get more hours out of existing staff. As one lecture said ARAM is detroying the college and nobody's doing anything about it.

It's like, you don't have that many students, so we will cut your funding and number of lectures, and thats how you'll get those nubmers up. Bull ****, and it puts science/ partical degrees as a major disadvantage as they cost more.

21-04-2006 2:19pm

LiouVille wrote:

Why is the SU seemingly not doing anything in relations to something which is obviously ****ing over the college, and students?

Although it might appear that nothing is being done, believe me we're working on it. That's patronising, but I don't want to say what's currently being done.

Dónal.

ApeXaviour · 21-04-2006 3:38pm

LiouVille wrote:

sicne departments no longer have to play with each other nicely, and anything that cost them money, which they dont' have to provide they can drop, and departments look to get more hours out of existing staff. As one lecture said ARAM is detroying the college and nobody's doing anything about it.

If it's so bad why are they doing it? Surely there must be some good aspects about it. I mean what is their reasoning behind it.

LiouVille wrote:

It's like, you don't have that many students, so we will cut your funding and number of lectures, and thats how you'll get those nubmers up. Bull ****, and it puts science/ partical degrees as a major disadvantage as they cost more.

And on the other end you have AB saying it'll put arts/bess at a major disadvantage.

AB what does this have to do with the physics department, if as you say it's been the brainchild of an economics prof?

Nietzschean · 21-04-2006 3:40pm

i dunno arts block wanna rob some of the physics departments cash mountain?

Nietzschean · 21-04-2006 4:03pm

seems i was wrong and that physics are getting a bigger mountain of cash....

Andrew 83 · 21-04-2006 4:22pm

Nietzschean wrote:

i dunno arts block wanna rob some of the physics departments cash mountain?

Basically they're changing the way different departments are funded. They've drawn up a list of departments that are 'underfunded' and over departments that are 'overfunded'. They then take money off the departments that are overfunded and give more money to those that are underfunded. There are problems however in the ways this is judged.

A large part of it is though that they're slashing funding to a number of Arts departments such as languages in particular and giving loads of extra money to ones like Physics.

Nietzschean · 21-04-2006 4:32pm

awell its nice to see it in paper that all yer artsy subjects are pointless n stupid n don't need to be run :P

Nietzschean · 21-04-2006 4:39pm

Simpsons wrote:

Skinner: I'm so happy with my evil plan,
Say goodbye to music, gym and art,
Soon we will have the perfect school,
Where fun and excitement never start.

Willy: I'm so drunk I can barely see,
But it helps me get through another day,
My stomach is filled with haggis and ham,
I've gotta go puke in some hay.

Bart: Lisa is a fool,
Skinner: I think the rules are cool,
Willy: I'm falling in the pool!

It somehow seemed appropriate

21-04-2006 5:28pm

ApeXaviour · 21-04-2006 5:36pm

Andrew 83 wrote:

Basically they're changing the way different departments are funded. They've drawn up a list of departments that are 'underfunded' and over departments that are 'overfunded'. They then take money off the departments that are overfunded and give more money to those that are underfunded. There are problems however in the ways this is judged.

So what are they judging it on?

Andrew 83 wrote:

A large part of it is though that they're slashing funding to a number of Arts departments such as languages in particular and giving loads of extra money to ones like Physics.

Enda made the point to me (one of his economics lecturers was raving) that physics has only ~10 graduates a year. He said the amount of funding is wholly disproportianate when compared to say BESS which has ~250 graduates per year. And this was all to do with hegarty being a big physics head. I think this is a little unfair considering that BESS is made up of multiple schools, as is science, physics being one of them.
Also numbers wise it's not fair to consider merely the numbers of graduates of physics. There are tie-in courses. Theoretical physics, comp phys, advanced materials, astrophysics. This brings the graduate number closer to 40. The physics staff resources are stretched somewhat as they have to teach courses to a wide range of disciplines (I very much doubt this will change): radiation therapy, engineering, pharmacy etc etc.
Again with numbers, the school of physics has 104 postgrad students and over 60 post-doctoral researchers (along with ~25 staff). This is set to increase with the advent of CRANN . It may be said that with this expansion comes with a severe need for extra funding.

Question: Physics, for example is a profit making school. Could it not be said that this extra funding is somewhat of a long term investment? That will inevitably benefit the college overall? (I don't claim to know this, hence the question, but it seems logical to me)

I'm not in any way wholly in support of ARAM (though admittedly it may stand to benefit me). However I think a lot of the information should be presented from either side before anybody gets into a murderous rage.

PS: I'm focusing on physics because its what I know. Genetics, chemistry etc all stand to gain heavily also.

PPS: Maybe we cannot blame the college wholly either. This seems to come from higher up. It's definitely wholly supported recent government actions, of that there's little question. Mary Hannafin's so called "4th level education" policy etc. Also the European University Association's quality review and our subsequent implementation.

Boston · 21-04-2006 8:04pm

ApeXaviour wrote:

If it's so bad why are they doing it? Surely there must be some good aspects about it. I mean what is their reasoning behind it.

And on the other end you have AB saying it'll put arts/bess at a major disadvantage.

AB what does this have to do with the physics department, if as you say it's been the brainchild of an economics prof?

Dec it's like this, the atitude is under this system that money is the buttom line, not education. So everything should be geared towards saving money. Less and bigger tutorials, When some leaves, don't repleace them, just get other people to work more hours, get rid of senior staff, strip away course elements to get as much into one course as possible, so you only need to pay one lecturer, restrict research as this costs money. It's all bull**** Dec, designed by a money man, not an educator. My current problem is because the school head has decided that instead of using the money designated to my department to repalce a lecture, to keep the money to reduce a budget deficit. As a result we're fuked.

You mentioned postgrade's Dec, under this system their a liability, not an assest.

DrIndy · 21-04-2006 9:28pm

LiouVille wrote:

Dec it's like this, the atitude is under this system that money is the buttom line, not education. So everything should be geared towards saving money. Less and bigger tutorials, When some leaves, don't repleace them, just get other people to work more hours, get rid of senior staff, strip away course elements to get as much into one course as possible, so you only need to pay one lecturer, restrict research as this costs money. It's all bull**** Dec, designed by a money man, not an educator. My current problem is because the school head has decided that instead of using the money designated to my department to repalce a lecture, to keep the money to reduce a budget deficit. As a result we're fuked.

You mentioned postgrade's Dec, under this system their a liability, not an assest.

It is based on education - not money. The course weightings are based on the resource needs for education, it costs more to train clinically based students, then laboratory based, then lecture/seminar based courses. You need higher staff student ratios for practical aspects and also the lab/clinics cost more as you need more lab assistants. In the case of clinical based subjects, you need to compete and pay at the going rates of professional work to hire them.

All this makes for increased costs.

The other weighting used is for research - money makes money and starting funding means more grants in the long term so it gets a bigger weigthing. Certain arts courses are good at research and pulling in grants so they also get a higher weighting (economics comes to mind).

Departments which hire out their expertise like chemistry and physics that teach other courses should get more funding, transferred from other schools - this reduces the begging that certain courses need to do to get that teaching or even having to stack their smaller classes into larger classes that have this and as a results their students don't in fact get taught their basic sciences specific to their subject needs.

It makes sense, there are winners and losers, but overall there is winners. People who gripe a lot amongst the academic staff are in part due to lack of effort. Gone are the days when you could get a cushy academic job for life with a big salary for teaching a few hours a week and piddling around with your research. Now it is more competitively based and hard working departments get more money, making those who were not shaping up, have to.

Finally, it models us much more closely with other modern american and european universities and demonstrates to the government that TCD is willing to change and attract MORE funding. Look to Belfield which is becoming a growing force in recent years. It also ends the mercurial system of funding assignment that existed in TCD where certain areas got more funding by tradition over the last few years and nobody knows why.

Boston · 21-04-2006 10:54pm

DrIndy wrote:

It is based on education

The only result Of aram I've seen is fewer courses taught by less lecturers. Education isn't motivating that move, money is.

Departments which hire out their expertise like chemistry and physics that teach other courses should get more funding, transferred from other schools - this reduces the begging that certain courses need to do to get that teaching or even having to stack their smaller classes into larger classes that have this and as a results their students don't in fact get taught their basic sciences specific to their subject needs.

That makes sense, but what if you can't "rent" lectures from other schools, but need to fund them yourself in highly specialised fields? It fails and fails badly in this regard.

It makes sense, there are winners and losers, but overall there is winners. People who gripe a lot amongst the academic staff are in part due to lack of effort. Gone are the days when you could get a cushy academic job for life with a big salary for teaching a few hours a week and piddling around with your research. Now it is more competitively based and hard working departments get more money, making those who were not shaping up, have to.

My department looks set to cancel a course, simply because their not being given to money to replace a lecturer, not due to a lack of demand. This will ahve a hugely negative effect on their ability to recruit new students and in the Quality of the degree. How is this shaping up, it's more like cuting the legs out fron beneath the department. You talk about how it should work but not how it is working. It's a half arsed semi "private" model.

You haven't explained how this leads to better eduation. All I see are cut backs.

ApeXaviour · 21-04-2006 11:04pm

LiouVille wrote:

You haven't explained how this leads to better eduation. All I see are cut backs.

The cutbacks are inevitable. They'll happen anyway. It's going on the paying of the Fixed Term Workers Act arrangements for staff (wage agreements) and also on pensions. What's happening is the college is (I suppose) hiding these cutbacks by doing it on the back of restructuring. And can you blame them. The re-allocation of a deficit of funds is designed to make the best of a bad situation. You may not agree with the way they're doing it (I'm not sure I do either) but I'll concede that the proposed plan will likely increase our rankings. This seems to be the board's end goal.

Danger Bob · 21-04-2006 11:33pm

It's difficult to separate whether this is for money or education. There's one group who would say that more money would lead to a better system and another group who would argue that education shouldn't be profitable. My personal opinion is that this leads to a situation where research (which is profitable) is prioritised over teaching (which isn't). Those who say that working to get rid of non-profitable practises is a good idea are completely forgetting about the idea of a university.

The arts subjects which college denote as not profitable add an extra spectrum to the life within the college. The teaching of subjects that range from the calculable to the abstract is part of what benefits the university and makes it as great as it is. Also, I'll remind DrIndy that the medical school is severely under threat under ARAM. How do you expect it to survive after cutting around one and a half million from its budget? A lot of science-based people aren't too sympathetic of these developments, but some of those schools are just as at-risk as some of the arts ones.

An interesting thing that I'd like to raise is that of corporate sponsorship. College may be driven to start accepting money from anywhere and everywhere and it may lead to similar arguments as the one that arose around the military funding earlier this year. Earlier today, I got a call from the editor of TN (who I'll be talking to in the morning) regarding the fact that Coke will sponsor two lectureships in Economics in the future. Now, these courses need such sponsorship to exist but, at the same time, the students' union is mandated to reject Coca Cola in general. So, we end up in a situation whereby we oppose such funding and also oppose the damage done to departments who aren't profitable. Basically, I can see us ending up in a situation whereby we're forced to either accept the death of numerous courses or to open the floodgates to all kinds of corporate deals.

In the end, the ARAM puts money over the pursuit of academic excellence. That's what this university is here for. Samuel Beckett would be turning in his grave.

cuckoo · 22-04-2006 12:06am

Are there any linkies with the ARAM figures, or are the numbers not public yet?

It's been mentioned upthread that Hegarty may be pro phyics coming from that school, i think it's more of note that he used to be Dean of Research - undergrad courses are needed 'cos it's a university and all, but post grad students are so much more attractive in terms of their output.

Coca cola sponsoring lectureships? it's only a matter of time before MacDonalds fund a few lecturers in nutrition, asking their students if they want fries with that tutorial sheet. But......it's good that lectureships are being funded, private money has in the past been focused on buildings that can bear the donor's name. Capital funding is nice and all, but staff are needed for the shiny new buildings.

DrIndy · 22-04-2006 12:21am

It would be very, very dangerous for Hegarty to be pro anything or anti anything right now, Cuckoo and I know he is too crafty a political player to be caught that easily!

Liouville - sounds like this is one of the hiccups in the system that arise from change and needs to be ironed out, not used as an example to castigate and entire resource allocation model.

Dangerbob - The medical school is in a very unique position of being assigned a whole new tier of funding from the Departments of Health and Education and in fact their budget will treble as a result.

And to everyone - all the best universities in the world with tremendous education potential such as Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, McMasters, Imperial College are ALL "money based" universities. There IS money in good education and research and TCD already has the potential to play in the same league as them if they get a chance.

Awayindahils · 22-04-2006 12:31am

in the short run i have ethical issues with the sponsorship of economics by coca-cola, but more so my real fear is what happens when the fudning isn't going to be made avaible anymore? no more economics in trinity is the only natural consequence i can see.

aside from that the general principle of ARAM seems to be systematic rape of the arts block begining with languages. now languages may be seen by some science undergrads as being airy fairy couses and degrees but for instsituions such as the EU comission and may international organisations they are absolutely essential. along with this language departments offer additional language courses to nearly every course in college, with a large emphaiss being placed on the Eramus programme. with the huge underfunding of languages which is being proposed is this still going to be possible, in reality the answer is highly unlikely. the department, well schools now will be focusing on what students they can still educate as they well should.

the proposed action is no less than a monumental disgrace, but only equal to the respone of the students union. i know that there will be an article in TN i know that there si one in the record and i knwo that the ulitmate goal of the SU is media covergae outside of trinity. what i dont know is how we are going to get that wiht just some articles, we need marches we need portests and we need a cmapain on the ground on monday, and in relaity the cmapain should have started on tuesdya of this week. i raised this exact point in council last week and while the council seemed to be in favour of some action the burden seems ot have been placed with our college publications, and this is just not on. the education officer and the president along with the other sabbats are there for our best interests and for nealy half the college ARAM is not in the best interest of the students. i went to inguire as to what i could pout in an email to my class about ARAM and got a non-commital wishy washy answer. i tired to get peopel to go with me again to get some answers about the planned course of action and on the day the flaked. it is not good enough ofr the sabbats to leave ARAM till next yera becuase next year it will be too late. and i dont care if its already a sure thing or not what matgters is that are objections are seena nd heard and thta we dont just wait for national media to pick up some student articles, not that they wont be play a vitla role in publsing ARAM but the sabbats need to be doing more. in fact if i knew hwo to get an emergency council held i would try to get a motion passed which madated the sabbats to act. and i am seriosuly sertisouly seriously annoyed and more so disappointed. helath charges were as good as let slip, and only seemed to be saved at the last moment this is appearing to be turning into a similar fiasco.

however the thing which has annoyed me most about ARAM is this, whilst talking to another bESS student who is incolved in the SU and asking them what they thought about ARAM and what should be done, i was told that i should be a good BESS rep and worry about BESS alone and let other reps worry about languages. i was utterly sickened. ARAM will give the college the opperuntiy to do many things with posisble accusences sucha s no lnaguages in tcd in 10 years and possibly no arts in the next 2 decades being a real reality.

as the students of this college we need to act now.

Nietzschean · 22-04-2006 1:03am

While in some regards i don't quite agree with this ARAM thing, and parts of those figures just look silly...

in principle i spose it makes sence, its resource re-allocation, its being re-balanced based on who's doing the most where type stuff. If physics can pull in lots of ug's , and pg's then fair enough their budget should be big to match it.....

From what i've personally seen its made the departments more compedative about trying to get more students into courses, which really isn't a bad thing , certainly alot of staff previously couldn't careless about an open day and what not, i'm guessing next year's open days will be much more impressive in an attempt to fill courses for more funding

, same goes for postgrads...

As regards what Louiville said about the departments having to use their own lecturers instead of getting them from other departments, from what i understood the department supplying the lecturer got to include the students as some fraction of a normal student of that dept. So they would receive extra funding for teaching in other departments, which seems sensible.

As regards certain courses disappearing, i don't know what course your referring to, but if its comp engineering, then it should go, its tiny fewer and fewer people doing it, should be scrapped anyway, get the students to sit in on cs lectures instead of getting their own if they want it to exist. Most of the comp eng 3rd/4th year courses i did were identical to an equivalent course being taught to cs students...

ApeXaviour · 22-04-2006 1:32am

Awayindahils wrote:

ARAM will give the college the opperuntiy to do many things with posisble accusences sucha s no lnaguages in tcd in 10 years and possibly no arts in the next 2 decades being a real reality. .

That's a little ridiculous. That's not going to happen. However (and I'm pretty much ripping this off what neitschaen said), it's government investment mostly at the end of the day. They want to see a return for there money and that isn't realised in much of arts. You could say there is an over emphasis on the arts etc currently (traditional reasons). By no means should we remove it, I have no doubt that they do have a contribution, but maybe it's a bit much currently? ie they should be on the smaller end of the schools rather than the bigger?

Boston · 22-04-2006 9:47am

cuckoo wrote:

Are there any linkies with the ARAM figures, or are the numbers not public yet?

It's been mentioned upthread that Hegarty may be pro phyics coming from that school, i think it's more of note that he used to be Dean of Research - undergrad courses are needed 'cos it's a university and all, but post grad students are so much more attractive in terms of their output.

I've been told that under this system a postgrade that is over five years in the college, is a liability not an asset, so I don't think he favored research.

DrIndy, don't take this the wrong way, since I've allot of regard for you, and accept you definitely know more about the inn's and out of Aram then I do, but that's a little patronizing. This is more then a hiccup, this will effectivly destroy allot of peoples degrees, and leave them at a sever disadvantage in the job market, not to mention threaten accreditation next year. I can easily see something like this killing a department which happens to be in decline. No body would take my degree choice without that option being there.

As regards certain courses disappearing, I don't know what course your referring to, but if its comp engineering, then it should go, its tiny fewer and fewer people doing it, should be scrapped anyway, get the students to sit in on cs lectures instead of getting their own if they want it to exist. Most of the comp eng 3rd/4th year courses I did were identical to an equivalent course being taught to cs students...

comp Engineering will not be scrapped in the near, or anything like it future. It's run by CS, and has allot of people behind it. 3rd/4th year Comp engineering is not the same as 3rd/4th year CS. Moths students only do a couple of the Comp engineering courses. There are approx 12 engineers doing 3rd year computer engineer course, and there will be the same number again next year doing 4th year comp engineering courses. pure Electronic engineers still do 3rd year comp engineering courses, so that raises the figure to about 30 people, plus about 4 maths students taking 3rd year comp engineering courses, alone, and you think it should be scrapped because no one's doing it? I don't have the figures on me, but I'd imagine that 3rd year CS have smaller numbers then that presently.

Also, the problem is that schools have to pay not for guest lecturers, if the school can't pay, their not allowed to replace a lecturer with another one from their own school, so courses run the risk of being dropped. That's the problem. As long as no school is in the red, the system works great, but if schools go into the red, problems arise. If the maths department (and this is purely hypothetical) was in the Red, one option would be to cut mahts students doing CS courses in 3rd year, or (and this is more likely) a department that's in the red stops providing a course to other departments, that's what my own department has done. It provided a course for comp science and Elec/comp engineers, now it's dropping it, now forth year comp science have less options despite being "in the black".

xeduCat · 22-04-2006 12:05pm

These are some of my observations on ARAM, but possibly a bit out of date, cause I don't have all the up to date information from recent weeks/months. For the record, I was a member of the Board and Council for 2004/5, and voted against the introduction of ARAM. The reason that I expressed at the crucial Board meeting was that it was insane to vote for a new system without running any data through it, and in some ways, I feel vindicated in that judgement, seeing the panic that has resulted when they finally got around to crunching some real numbers.

In a strange way, I'm glad to see individual people from departments/schools getting p'ssed off about it now. I'm sorry if that sounds too Machievellian, but my experience was that the ARAM 'issue' was the toughest of tough sells. I wrote Record articles or spent patient hours (some cases, literally so) explaining the principles of the system to Record and TN reporters. I wrote summaries, begged class reps to tell their class, attended ten consecutive Board meetings where this topic was discussed, etc. But all anyone outside a core group could think about was 'you can't make us merge with THEM!'. There were, as I have always pointed out, two elements to restructuring/reform - one was ARAM and one was 'schools and departments'. I believe that the often headless response of staff and students to the latter gave the former an easy ride. Let's face it. ARAM is boring. Extremely boring. Even to 'dismal scientists' (you know who you are, econokiddies), it's quite dull. So to those of you who are now realising how big a deal it actually IS, that's perfectly reasonable, although allow me a brief moment of 'I told you so'. One thing I'd say to reassure newcomers to the argument is that it's not absolutely too late, although it is hard. Tell your lecturers; bug your class rep; give your reports on what this means in practice to Dónal; make some noise in whatever way you can. Please read this post, despite its length!

ARAM is a formula, basically - or a set of formulae. It takes the public and income that reaches the college (i.e. block grant, 'free fees' money, and applies various calculations to it, and then parcels it out among 'academic units' (schools and for now, vice-deaneries - i.e. collections of departments that are yet to form a school). Costs of running College are also parcelled out, with simpler formulae. Schools get to keep direct income (postgrad fees, research grants, etc). So the money that a school can actually play with is 'parcel' plus 'direct income' minus 'allocated costs'. Out of that lump, they pay salaries etc. THIS IS NEW - the old system was that the 'centre' of college was responsible for salaries and for most financial matters, and the departments had limited budgets of their own. Under the new system, each school is a financial unit with its own budget etc.

There isn't a problem with a formula itself. But of course you then ask, what principles are applied in it? For the splitting up of the public money, there are various calculations - i.e. 5% gets kept for a college strategic fund, the rest is theoretically split 70/30 between teaching and research - this means that some of the money will be divided based on 'teaching measures' (student numbers, student 'weights', etc) and some on 'research measures'. Both of these are controversial. For the teaching, the weights cause issues. Obviously, a school teaching 100 chemistry students needs more and therefore gets more than a school teaching 100 English students. This is not a new idea. However, the formula applied is actually quite narrow - excluding medicine, because that's an unusual case, there are three 'bands' - a ratio of 1 : 1.4 : 1.7 - which basically break down as books : dry labs : wet labs. The question is - is this too broad to recognise what schools actually do? The college has also tried to build incentives into the weighting - so PhD students get higher weights, etc, but PhD students who don't complete in time act as an anti-weight.

Research measures are even more contested. At the moment, the measure of research success (and thus the calculation of how much your school gets of the research bit of the public money) has two headings - how much you spend on research (basically, your grant income) and how many reseach students you put through. There is a serious hole in the logic here - if your school gets big SFI grants, you score well on heading 1 (obviously), and the extra money you have to give studentships etc and to take on PGs to work in SFI groups means that you score well on heading 2 as well! You also get to keep most of the SFI money for yourself. On the other hand, if you are in a school that does 'cheap' research (and this does not only mean Arts research - there is cheap science just as much as there is expensive arts, so please lay off on the rhetoric there ;-) ), you lose. So those that are already reasonably successful at research get bigger and bigger chunks of the College pot and those that are not find it very difficult to grow. This is the brave new world of research.

Actually, most aspects of ARAM would be fine - if you were setting up a new college. However, on an existing college, with actual students and staff, bringing in a new allocation system can lead to chaos. It makes schools responsible for their own finances, and then says to some of them 'right, now this formula says that you are entitled to X, but your current staff and programmes etc needs Y'. If X is greater than Y (a minority of cases), you just sit and wait for the extra cash to start rolling in. If X is less than Y, the cuts are phased in over a couple of years. This year, only a small amount was brought in - but for 05/06, it's more. This is not (as it appears from some of the stats etc) a case of Schools being 'in deficit' or running up the credit card bill. This is a case of a school being told that if the ARAM system came in overnight, they would be spending too much, if they just continued what they've been doing in previous years.

So they have two choices - naturally enough - increase income or decrease spending. Increasing income is the College's wet dream - you do it through getting new research grants, running conferences or special events, or "playing the formula" (i.e. increasing your non-EU numbers in particular, because they aren't in the formula, so you get all their income directly). Decreasing the spending is what's being talked about by a lot of schools quite seriously, though. The concern is that decreasing the spending in schools that are already struggling, but the God of ARAM calls 'overfunded' - i.e. X is less than Y, so they get more now than they would in the future - will just spiral down and down, because with less money (and little ability to increase income), standards will drop, etc etc. This is the nightmare scenario. The perfect scenario is that everyone comes up with new and clever ways to bring in income, and we all live happily after. Oh, and all those stresspigs will take flight over the Campanile.

In summary, then. ARAM is a formula to deal with the income and expenditure of Trinity. For some people it means cash, for others it means cuts. This, though, is what makes it so hard to debate. It's hard to have a rational debate when the first thing that everyone says is 'what does it mean for my department?'. It tied my hands a lot last year as an elected rep - I could see the principled problems, but most people who did show an interest were (naturally enough) interested in how it affected their corner of College. Solidarity isn't dead, but when you are only here for a few years, it's hard to see the longer view. One of the most disturbing things about ARAM, in my opinion, is that by allowing a phase-in, it means that no matter how wonderful the college will be in the future, it condemns an entire cohort of students, in many schools, to have four years of chaos and uncertainty, and not knowing what they will have offered to them from year to year. That's the true indictment of this type of economic thinking - it's talking about variables, not people.

One last point, as it's been mentioned above by Liouville and others. Because schools are now semi-independent financial units, and control their own budgets, they deal with each other in a totally different way. Under the old way, when 'Trinity' paid everyone's salaries, it wasn't a crucial issue who did which bit of teaching, because it was all part of the one. Now, when schools get their budgets based on the formula, and have to pay their salaries out of that, it's a totally different story. That's why these issues are being fussed over now. A similar fuss is being made over the distribution of costs - some schools argue (idiotically) that the costs should also have a complex formula on who uses which services and so on, which is a recipe for disaster from the point of view of any of the services. Money is given to Trinity as a college, and services (such as buildings, the main network, libraries, etc) are provided as a college.

xeduCat · 22-04-2006 12:06pm

Ha! I don't believe it. I didn't even know there was a maximum limit on the number of characters in a post! But there is. So here is my final paragraph from the post above.

I used a particular example in argument last year, and I think it's just as relevant now - that of the BBC in the 1990s. Under their reforms, designed to make things more efficient etc, they created an internal market, quite similar to what is in place here now. It ended up that it was cheaper to go to HMV to buy a CD than to get it from a different BBC music library and go through all the cost systems. If you wanted advice on how to pronounce a word (and yes, the BBC has a Pronounciation Office), your department was charged per word. Radio shows were 'billed' for the various admin services that they used. They scrapped most of this in recent years because it was, quite frankly, a sh't way to run a public service. As for Trinity, I don't believe that schools should be independent republics and students mere calculations on a page. Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing (thanks, Oscar) may make sense on paper, but I'm yet to be convinced of its practical or educational benefits.

Boston · 22-04-2006 12:29pm

Absolutely brilliant post. Thank you for laying it out so clearly. One thing, you mentioned "If aram was brought in over night, this is the deficit..." So Aram isn't in? And all the cutting is to get prepared for ARAM, like my department doesn't actually owe 700,000k, but they would owe?

Btw who are you, I thought you where Myth?

xeduCat · 22-04-2006 12:58pm

I'm Myth's predecessor. Last year's education officer.

ARAM is in in principle - i.e. the Board has decided that it is happening. For 05/06, they 'applied' 10% of it - i.e. if you were due to go from 1,000,000 to 600,000 (i.e. a 400,000 cut), you would be cut from 1,000,000 to 960,000 (i.e. 10% of the cut of 400,000). Then in the next year (06/07), I think it would rise to 40%, and then more in 07/08 and the full amount in 08/09 (I think). So what's happening at the moment is a mix of 'preparation' and 'actual cuts'. There's an added complication in that it helps right now to have your house in order - i.e. to be due to 'win' after ARAM comes in. For example, when they were dealing with approving new positions or replacing retired staff at the end of last year, there were two procedures - one for schools due to get more money in ARAM and one for schools due to lose. Naturally, the procedure for schools-due-to-win was more favourable than for schools-due-to-lose. So everyone is trying to spin their figures for that an other reasons...

Boston · 22-04-2006 1:09pm

Thank you thank you, I love you. you've no idea the frustration I've been feeling trying to figure out what the actual depth of my deparment is, and how people would be talking 400,000 euro and 40,000 euro and so on. You posts are going to a huge help if my school cuts the options.

ARAM and how it's affecting the college

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