Pimp my University

Stargal

There's been a lot of articles and letters in both the Indo and the Times all week about the 'poaching' of academic staff from one university by another - it all kicked off when a Doctor in Nutrition from Trin announced that he was moving to UCD, along with his 23-strong research team a couple of months ago (there's a thread somewhere here about it....)

It's interesting cos UCD are refusing to sign an agreement with the other six universities which would encourage co-operation between all of them (such as the recent announcements with Trinity and UCC and NUIG), as Hugh Brady says that it's 'anti-competitive'. A lot of the letters in the Times this week from academics around the country supported this view, saying that it's good for universities to have competition for the best academics - supporting what Dr. Nutrition (ahem) did.

So what do people think - should the universities in Ireland be free to offer attractive packages to academics that they want to attract in order to increase their standards/reputation? Or should they all be working together to increase standards across the board, rather than competing against each other?

[And just on an aside - Dr Nutrition (whose name I unfortunately can't recall) has since said that he simply responded to an advertisement by UCD and that since Trin isn't especially strong in the field of nutrition, he thought he could do more in UCD]

Andrew 83

Hard to know, people should be free to move and apply for jobs where they want to but I would be against open poaching and think the general standard should be worked on with joint projects etc. (Trinity and UCD do joint works in the Social Sciences, don't know about other areas)

Edwardius

Weeeelll, according to himself he had to go through two interviews and a load of hassle, but you're not gonna uproot a 23 strong research just like that now, are you?

Right_Side

Of course it should be allowed! Competition makes everyone better off!

Andrew 83

Not when a broader and more wide ranging team can be assembled to provide more comprehensive analysis. Different people and departments will have different skills to bring. This isn't a fast food restaurant.

Right_Side

Andrew 83 wrote:

Not when a broader and more wide ranging team can be assembled to provide more comprehensive analysis. Different people and departments will have different skills to bring.

How do you know a competitive environment will mean this can't happen?

When you say comprehensive analysis... of what research benefit was this nutrition guy to another scientist in a completely different field? UCD offered him a better deal and where more committed to his research interests.

Resources by their nature are scarce and a university can't be a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. It has to pick what its focus is and become a world leader in that field.

This isn't a fast food restaurant.

Thank you for pointing this out.

ApeXaviour

Right_Side wrote:

Of course it should be allowed! Competition makes everyone better off!

Maybe in business I might agree with you. But in research (scientific research at least) it really really doesn't.
Say two research groups in different universities are working on similar things. It doesn't make sense that they should do so entirely seperately. They'll end up discovering the same stuff and having to get over problems independently. Where if they worked cooperatively (as say one research team in the school of physics is with nuig with the odd joint-PhD even) they would double their output making both more successful.

Chakar

In the Irish Independent it transpired that Professor Gibney was not "poached" by UCD.

Nutrition expert says he was only offered post after two interviews

THE country's leading nutrition expert has denied he was 'poached' by UCD from Trinity, saying that he simply applied for a job.

Prof Michael Gibney who is moving with a team of 23 researchers to Belfield has also denied that his salary has been 'topped up' at the taxpayers' expense.

In a letter to the Editor of the Irish Independent, Prof Gibney said that "the idea that the Irish Universities would create a charter to block career moves such as mine is laughable. University staff move all the time and occasionally, and not in my case, move without any formal advertisement or competition.

"In the US, movement of academic staff is normal and common and competition between US universities for Nobel laureates is legendary," he added.

Prof Gibney worked in Trinity for 23 years and in that time developed a significant presence in the international arena of nutrition research.

He said his researchers were financed by grants and did not work for Trinity.

"None are employed by TCD because nutrition is too small a subject to warrant inward investment by the university itself." Prof Gibney added that he was "very happy working in TCD but recognised more than a decade ago that Trinity could never rival University College Cork or the University of Ulster in nutrition research, because nutrition or indeed the broader subject of food and health is not a priority subject for TCD. It does not have the 'critical mass' to be a priority because it is too small with just three academic staff and I have very happily lived with that fact in my time in TCD."

He said he applied for the chair of food and health post in UCD after noting a recruitment advertisement for the job.

He added that he was interviewed by a panel and later the UCD president before being offered the position.

"That is not poaching," Prof Gibney said.

Time Magazine

Right_Side wrote:

Of course it should be allowed! Competition makes everyone better off!

And co-operation by public-serving bodies also makes everyone better off.

Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev in Business & Finance Magazine, v.26 n.15, pp. 24-25. wrote:

As it stands, our best perfomance in innovation is not driven by new inventions or scientific breakthroughs but by applications of existing R&D.

Competition can be good given certain situations, including sufficient capital and mass. Ireland is a small country; it is accepted by 6 of the 7 (and really 7 of the 7)* heads of the universities that co-operation is certainly the most effective way of getting economies of scale and so on. Do you really think the magnificent Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices would benefit from the co-operation of our friends in UCD, DCU, DIT, NUIG, NUIM and UCC; or would you suggest that such co-operation would lead to a cosy cartel in the profitable business of research?

Do you really not see the potential advantages of co-ordination in areas such as the Centre for Urban Regional Studies, the Anti-Bullying Centre, the Molecular Medicine Centre, the Children's Research Centre, the Policy Institute, IIIS, the Neuroscience Centre....?

Are you really that much of a fine-in-practice-but-what-about-theory iconoclast?

*Prof Brady appears to be trying to play both games.

Ibid

Ibid wrote:

Do you really think the magnificent Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices would benefit from the co-operation of our friends in UCD, DCU, DIT, NUIG, NUIM and UCC; or would you suggest that such co-operation would lead to a cosy cartel in the profitable business of research?

You never liked UL to begin with, did you?

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

The proposals don't actually ban competition.

Unis can recruit from other unis providing an ad is placed in the paper and a free interview process is held.

The proposals are purely to make it harder to poach staff by means of secret meetings, unadvertised positions etc.

Whatever about the proposals, even if UCDD don't accept them they should probably sign them anyway. Really can't see how the agreement could be legally enforced.

Also, think Mike Gibney (former Director of Research in TCD) also made subtle comments about not being treated right in TCD. Whether this was the point he was actually making, and whether it is correct or not; why shouldn't academics (or groups of academics) be allowed to enter negotiations to cross over to a different third level institution if they don't feel that their current employer is treating them right?

It forces unis to treat them correctly for fear of losing them - which can be no bad thing.

"Poaching" is a major part of US university's operations when they feel that a particular team is lacking. Seems to work fine over there.

Hitchhiker's Guide to...

Also co-operation and competition are not mutually exclusive. A prominent theory in management has been developed to describe how IT companies tend to work together and yet compete fiercely at the same time. The imaginative title of this theory is: "co-opetition" !

Clearly, some creative genius spent a long time coming up with that title!