Letter from senior figure in one of Institutes of Technology ( Irish Times Sept 28 )

millix

I expect the senior figure quoted here will probably want to get with Dr Ed Walsh, who holds broadly similar views on the salary scales, productivity and general competence of large sections of the Irish educational sector


M

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The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Teacher's Pet

An insider’s guide to education


** Speaking of academic pay rates, the following is the text of a letter we received from a senior figure in one of the Institutes of Technology (IOTs).
“In the IoTs, there is no requirement on teaching staff to hold a PhD-level qualifications to be hired, which is as it should be. We have people with trade certificates and basic degrees earning huge amounts of money. There is no expectation on these people to produce any research or do anything other than be present for their basic teaching hours. Once the examinations are over in the middle of May, they are not seen again on campus until the 1st of September, apart from dealing with the exams process, correcting scripts etc, for which they are paid additional, extraordinary sums of money.
“This also applies to Heads of Departments and Schools, probably averaging almost €100,000 pa – these people are here for little more than six months of the year. In short, the rates of academic pay in the IoTs, for a hugely underqualified and underperforming workforce, is nothing short of a national disgrace.”
The academic in question wants to maintain his anonymity. He writes: “I have to work with these people every day, so I would be committing career suicide by going public. I’ve seen too many people who spoke out get isolated over the years. It’s just not worth it.”
Expect this issue to receive considerably more coverage in the coming weeks.

evolving_doors

millix wrote: »

I expect the senior figure quoted here will probably want to get with Dr Ed Walsh, who holds broadly similar views on the salary scales, productivity and general competence of large sections of the Irish educational sector


M

---

The Irish Times - Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Teacher's Pet

An insider’s guide to education


** Speaking of academic pay rates, the following is the text of a letter we received from a senior figure in one of the Institutes of Technology (IOTs).
“In the IoTs, there is no requirement on teaching staff to hold a PhD-level qualifications to be hired, which is as it should be. We have people with trade certificates and basic degrees earning huge amounts of money. There is no expectation on these people to produce any research or do anything other than be present for their basic teaching hours. Once the examinations are over in the middle of May, they are not seen again on campus until the 1st of September, apart from dealing with the exams process, correcting scripts etc, for which they are paid additional, extraordinary sums of money.
“This also applies to Heads of Departments and Schools, probably averaging almost €100,000 pa – these people are here for little more than six months of the year. In short, the rates of academic pay in the IoTs, for a hugely underqualified and underperforming workforce, is nothing short of a national disgrace.”
The academic in question wants to maintain his anonymity. He writes: “I have to work with these people every day, so I would be committing career suicide by going public. I’ve seen too many people who spoke out get isolated over the years. It’s just not worth it.”
Expect this issue to receive considerably more coverage in the coming weeks.

Sounds like he's talking about the Dail to me

graduate

Benchmarking was a joke where IT lecturers, who are typically less qualified and have a shorter year, got almost 4 times the increase of university lecturers. Hopefully this will be revisited rather than cutting everyone equally.

Godge

The first two posts criticise the article but advance no evidence to support their case.

Can anyone set out exactly what are the holiday entitlements of IT lecturers and link to the relevant information?

TheDriver

I love the fact that Universities and ITs state PhDs are the standard for lecturers yet they never need any education qualification. How many of these lecturers have actually been thought how to teach. Put them in front of 32 kids picking their noses and scratching their arses wanting to go home to play the xbox and smoke weed and they could quikcly shut up

positivenote

theres 3 pay scales in the IOT pay structure, and some have been lecturering for nearly 10years and are still on the lowest scale (AL) despite having more contact hrs than those on the L scale. The whole structure is disgraceful

virmilitaris

TheDriver wrote: »

I love the fact that Universities and ITs state PhDs are the standard for lecturers yet they never need any education qualification. How many of these lecturers have actually been thought how to teach. Put them in front of 32 kids picking their noses and scratching their arses wanting to go home to play the xbox and smoke weed and they could quikcly shut up

Because it's not their job to handhold anyone. Speaking as someone with an Engineering background, it's not a Professor or Lecturers job to do anything of the sort. A Professors main occupation at all times should be his research and his students research in the specifics of his field. By third level students are expected to do it on their own, if they're incapable of that then they don't belong there.

TheDriver

It is also their jobs to ensure their lectures are well planned, understandable, set at an appropriate level and good practice educationally. Teaching 1st year Engineering cert with guys who got 200 points is a whole different thing than medicine. If students can't do a course because of bad lecturing, then they are failing the system and don't deserve the money.

dambarude

TheDriver wrote: »

If students can't do a course because of bad lecturing, then they are failing the system and don't deserve the money.

Surely that means they shouldn't be doing the course in the first place, no?

The new government in England appear to be moving away from the 'everyone should go college' view. It's not a bad thing if you ask me. I'm not saying that one's education should stop at LC level, but wasting time and money on a 3rd level education that you don't like or are not suited too is not good.

All teachers no matter what their level have to adapt and tweak their methods depending on particular student cohorts, but bringing students through something that they are just not interested in, or not cut out for surely shouldn't be expected at third level.

EoghanRua

dambarude wrote: »

Surely that means they shouldn't be doing the course in the first place, no?

The new government in England appear to be moving away from the 'everyone should go college' view. It's not a bad thing if you ask me. I'm not saying that one's education should stop at LC level, but wasting time and money on a 3rd level education that you don't like or are not suited too is not good.

All teachers no matter what their level have to adapt and tweak their methods depending on particular student cohorts, but bringing students through something that they are just not interested in, or not cut out for surely shouldn't be expected at third level.

Do you not accept that there is such a thing as a bad lecturer? Or is it always the case that it is the students' fault if they can get nothing from it?

dambarude

Of course I do, I've had plenty of them myself. The worst ones tend to be the lazy ones in my experience.

Do you accept that some students do courses that they are just not able for? Most colleges have forms of extra support, extra tutorials and the like, to help students in difficult subjects. Anecdotally (though I'm sure there are figures for it somewhere) I've heard that the dropout rate in certain courses is very high because students either have no interest in the modules they have to take, or not suited to the level of work that they have to do.

I just think that 3rd level cannot be compared with 2nd level. Lecturers should help students, and adapt if students find certain things difficult, but they shouldn't have to bend over backways to accommodate those who do not want to be there, or totally unsuited to the course.

EoghanRua

dambarude wrote: »

Of course I do, I've had plenty of them myself. The worst ones tend to be the lazy ones in my experience.

Do you accept that some students do courses that they are just not able for? Most colleges have forms of extra support, extra tutorials and the like, to help students in difficult subjects. Anecdotally (though I'm sure there are figures for it somewhere) I've heard that the dropout rate in certain courses is very high because students either have no interest in the modules they have to take, or not suited to the level of work that they have to do.

I just think that 3rd level cannot be compared with 2nd level. Lecturers should help students, and adapt if students find certain things difficult, but they shouldn't have to bend over backways to accommodate those who do not want to be there, or totally unsuited to the course.

I'm not convinced you do accept that there are bad lecturers. You were asked a direct question by me about bad lecturers and 90 per cent of your reply is talking about students rather than lecturers.

We would all accept that there are poor students. But they tend to drop out, while poor lecturers are defended by people like you as if they could not possibly have a case to answer.

dambarude

EoghanRua wrote: »

We would all accept that there are poor students. But they tend to drop out, while poor lecturers are defended by people like you as if they could not possibly have a case to answer.

Believe me, I DO accept that there are bad lecturers. I'm a student myself, I've given out about them often enough! Luckily I've never had one that was completely unsuited to the job, but I have had some that perhaps weren't as good at communicating as others, or didn't have as much of an interest in what they were doing.

The thing is that I know I'm a big boy now, and that what I do independently of lectures will probably benefit me far more than anything that is covered in the lecture hall. If a lecturer doesn't explain something as well as he/she should, I'll read up on it myself, or ask somebody who understands it to help me with it. If I have to I'll ask the lecturer as well.

The lack of indepedent thought or willingness to engage in self-directed learning is all too often mentioned in relation to students who have just finished the leaving cert. Guide them all by the hand through 3rd level and before long we'll be saying the same thing about graduates after finishing their degree (if that's not being said already).

dlofnep

I got my degree in an IT and I can safely say, there were many lecturers who just shouldn't have been working. They clearly did not know their stuff. Other lecturers however were worth their weight in gold - but difference between the two was frightening.

We had one lecturer who came in every day and sat down at a computer and did nothing. Absolutely nothing. He did this for a full semester. We complained about it. What did they do? They gave him a permanent position. Disgraceful. Nice chap as a person, but horrific lecturer.

dambarude

dlofnep wrote: »

We had one lecturer who came in every day and sat down at a computer and did nothing. Absolutely nothing. He did this for a full semester. We complained about it. What did they do? They gave him a permanent position. Disgraceful. Nice chap as a person, but horrific lecturer.

Extreme cases like this obviously shouldn't be allowed happen.

dlofnep

dambarude wrote: »

Extreme cases like this obviously shouldn't be allowed happen.

Well, they do.

EoghanRua

dambarude wrote: »

Believe me, I DO accept that there are bad lecturers. I'm a student myself, I've given out about them often enough! Luckily I've never had one that was completely unsuited to the job, but I have had some that perhaps weren't as good at communicating as others, or didn't have as much of an interest in what they were doing.

The thing is that I know I'm a big boy now, and that what I do independently of lectures will probably benefit me far more than anything that is covered in the lecture hall. If a lecturer doesn't explain something as well as he/she should, I'll read up on it myself, or ask somebody who understands it to help me with it. If I have to I'll ask the lecturer as well.

The lack of indepedent thought or willingness to engage in self-directed learning is all too often mentioned in relation to students who have just finished the leaving cert. Guide them all by the hand through 3rd level and before long we'll be saying the same thing about graduates after finishing their degree (if that's not being said already).

There you go again making excuses for bad lecturers!

Confusing bad lecturing with lack of independent learning is specious nonsense, with respect.

Independent learning is a complementary requirement to lectures. It is not a replacement. It should not be something a student has to do to compensate for poor and indecipherable lecturers.

If a lecturer doesn't explain something as well as he/she should, then that is his/her fault, end of story. Students should be reading up on further additional material afterwards and not forced to ask another student or do further reading to find out what the hell the lecturer was on about in the first place.

A teacher/lecturer has to communicate ideas and elucidate concepts/ideas and create a context for learning. If all of that can be done by reading anyway, as you appear to suggest, then why bother with teachers/lecturers at all?

dambarude

I'm not trying to compensate for bad lecturers. I'm just saying that if they don't always explain things as well as they could or should I'll seek clarification myself. As I said, I've been lucky enough to dodge any very bad lecturers, so I've never had to deal with complete unprofessionalism and incompetence. In cases where a lecturer is definitely not up to the job they shouldn't be allowed continue. But the reality is that nothing is ever really done about such lecturers, so letting your studies go downhill when you could have done something about it yourself doesn't make any sense. In my opinion anyway.

kraggy

Wouldn't be Ed Walsh who was quoted anyway, he's not in an I.T.

He lecutres in UL.

rainbowtrout

kraggy wrote: »

Wouldn't be Ed Walsh who was quoted anyway, he's not in an I.T.

He lecutres in UL.

Isn't Ed Walsh long gone from UL? He was president when I was there in the late 90s and had his retirement before I graduated I think.

dambarude

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Isn't Ed Walsh long gone from UL? He was president when I was there in the late 90s and had his retirement before I graduated I think.

He is AFAIK, but it doesn't stop him giving out about teachers and public servants every few months in the papers.

rainbowtrout

dambarude wrote: »

He is AFAIK, but it doesn't stop him giving out about teachers and public servants every few months in the papers.

Yep. I've always wondered about that, he could have made a few improvements in UL while he was there.

TheDriver

always find the irony with Ed Walsh is the obvious large salary and pension he gets and gives out about Teacher's pay and performance when he didn't do anything in UL to combat this issue itself.
There are way too many courses in college that people aren't suited to and the CAO doesn't recognise this fact yet, its all on points e.g. getting into engineering with the minimum requirements but only have a C in Physics and A's in humanities isn't going to bode well for that student in College.
I do think though that the "support" mechanisms for college are also crap i.e. tutorials by a PhD student who doesn't know how to teach or understand that people need to get the idea before they themselves can excel. I have seen a lot of bad lecturers and I think there should be some form of educational qualification no matter how well respected you are in University.

rainbowtrout

TheDriver wrote: »

always find the irony with Ed Walsh is the obvious large salary and pension he gets and gives out about Teacher's pay and performance when he didn't do anything in UL to combat this issue itself.
There are way too many courses in college that people aren't suited to and the CAO doesn't recognise this fact yet, its all on points e.g. getting into engineering with the minimum requirements but only have a C in Physics and A's in humanities isn't going to bode well for that student in College.
I do think though that the "support" mechanisms for college are also crap i.e. tutorials by a PhD student who doesn't know how to teach or understand that people need to get the idea before they themselves can excel. I have seen a lot of bad lecturers and I think there should be some form of educational qualification no matter how well respected you are in University.

I agree. I was amazed to learn a couple of years ago that the requirements for my degree (Science Teaching in UL) as it nows stands, allows a student to enter the course with Ordinary Level C in any science. Now the chances that a student will score high enough points in their other subjects and want to teach science when they are only doing OL are small, but still that is a ridiculously low standard to set. There are students in LC who can't spell science let alone teach it.

spurious

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Yep. I've always wondered about that, he could have made a few improvements in UL while he was there.

Actually DO something, instead of moaning? You jest.