Protest on Wednesday 3/11

Jonathan

electrogrimey wrote: »

How is it not realistic to think they'll give themselves a raise?

There is a difference between actual pay rises and moving to a higher increment on the salary scale because of years service. If that is the case then your argument should be directed at all civil and public service workers.

The cost will fall when a general election is held and new TDs (starting on the first point of the salary scale) are elected.

Groinshot

electrogrimey wrote: »

They're daring to appeal the court's decision to have the bye-election this month, simply because they know they'll lose it

That remains to be seen. I know plenty of people who would vote fianna fail if charles manson was running for them. People will continue to vote fianna fail if they always have done. the irish electorate is so immature, TD's are used these days for "Getting johnny a medical card" or somethign like that. They're covering for the inadequate service provided by our civil service. Personally I think there's too many TD's...

Tragedy

There needs to be a clearer divide between TD(your representative for national issues) and Councillors(your representative for local issues).

TD's being your representative for local issues is a very bad thing imho.
Martin Mansergh thinks it works fine though :rolleyes:

I'd love if USI organised a (non-protest) march for the Student Support Bill when it finally goes to the Dáil hopefully sometime soon.
That's a march I'd go on :pac:

electrogrimey

If you read Fintan O'Toole's thing for an overhaul of the government, he said that one of the major things was to change the PR-STV system to an AM system, where half the TDs are elected as constituent TDs, and the other half are national TDs. That'd be a much better system.

Tragedy

Call me weird, I rather like the idea of some variation of National List system.
I don't find PR-STV particularly democratic in effect, and tends to marginalise power into a few key peoples hands(i.e. look at any minority party in power, punching far above their weight - or an independent).

Ahoyhoy

Tragedy wrote: »

I'd love if USI organised a (non-protest) march for the Student Support Bill when it finally goes to the Dáil hopefully sometime soon.
That's a march I'd go on :pac:

It would be nice if you'd ever ask someone who knows about this kind of thing. Thanks to a hell of a lot of pressure from SUs all over the country that bill is going back to the cabinet this month, with legislation for a central grant awarding body, and should be signed in before the end of the year. I asked the welfare officer about this today and that's what I was told. Like I've said before the SU screws up a lot but you have to admit this is a very good thing.

Maybe my little sis will actually get her grant on time when she comes to college.

Tragedy

Ahoyhoy wrote: »

It would be nice if you'd ever ask someone who knows about this kind of thing. Thanks to a hell of a lot of pressure from SUs all over the country that bill is going back to the cabinet this month, with legislation for a central grant awarding body, and should be signed in before the end of the year. I asked the welfare officer about this today and that's what I was told. Like I've said before the SU screws up a lot but you have to admit this is a very good thing.

Maybe my little sis will actually get her grant on time when she comes to college.

I knew everything you said in your post already, I don't get how/why you're trying to attack me?


Actually, I didn't know it was reducing the grant awarding bodies from 66 to 1(I heard halved, roughly). I had read that the amount of grant schemes were being reduced from 4 to 1, are you sure you haven't gotten confused?

Tragedy

Guys, great news. According to Nikolai, the government is starting to backtrack on cuts to the education budget!

The government that never published or confirmed cuts to the education budget!

Is backtracking!

On cuts it never published or confirmed!

Because of the actions of students!

Of course!

The government never confirmed cuts to the education budget, the only thing they confirmed(they also said the exact same thing in 2009 and they didn't increase the registration fee) is "Deputy Mary Coughlan: No decisions have been made either way."

This was at a Parliamentary Debate in May. No government announcement since(to the best of my knowledge, did do a lot of google-fu/paper reading) as the budget isn't going to be finalised for another few weeks anyway.

I'm all for Students Unions making a difference, promoting students having a voice etc, but I'm not for SU's manipulating, leading students on or 'creating' victories for them to crow about out of thin air.

Did you see/hear USI or any of the SU's talking about the Top 100 Best-Paid in Education list that the Irish Times published this week? 500 staff in Universities/IT's are paid over €115k a year. That's €65million for 500 people.

That would pay over 43,000 students annual registration fee.

Of course, TCDSU is too cozy with the college authorities to actually make an issue of this.

Or make an issue of Trinity breaking the public service embargo by promoting staff and increasing their pensions this year.

Unions always end up the same way, self serving.

Also: Over 75 per cent of the €8.59 billion education budget is absorbed by pay and pensions.

Where's the campaigns and marching for third level administrative and education reform? Oh right yeah, we can't do that, it's too hard.

AndrewJD

Tragedy wrote: »

500 staff in Universities/IT's are paid over €115k a year.

Because that's what they're worth. If you want a decent academic staff you pay a decent price for them.

Tragedy

AndrewJD wrote: »

Because that's what they're worth. If you want a decent academic staff you pay a decent price for them.

Really? And you're basing that on what? We need to pay among the best in the world, to attract mediocore/average(judging by university rankings)?

In 2007/08:

* University professors in Ireland were paid an average of about €136,000 compared with a UK average of €75,459 -- and €88,593 in Cambridge and €81,514 in Oxford.
* Senior lecturers in Ireland had an average salary of €82,668 compared with a UK average of €50,024.
* Lecturers in Ireland had an average salary of €67,502, while the UK average was €41,153.

They are paid on a six-point salary scale which ranges from around €113,000 to €146,000.

This salary scale is far in excess of what is available to professors in Canada, who are paid between €61,000 and €83,000. They are also ahead of many of their colleagues in England, with professors in University College London paid salaries ranging from €67,000 to €124,000. And Irish professors are also better paid than those in the North, with professors in Queen's University Belfast earning salaries of between €65,000-€129,000.

The lowest salary for our professors of €113,000 is also way ahead of the average salary of €79,000 paid to professors in the US -- although this figure does not include additional payments for summer teaching and administrative expenses.

* The 177 unauthorised salary top-ups given by universities to senior management staff over a 10-year period before they were obliged to stop them in 2009.
* The University of Limerick's decision to pay three people presidential salaries of €228,050 each, at the same time, over a two-year period.

UL is a world renowned place of learning after all, it's whats needed to attrack the best.

Also, thank you for bothering to look at the actual top 100 and seeing just how many admin staff are in it.

oharach

Tragedy wrote: »

Unions always end up the same way, self serving.

Including the USI.

Tragedy

oharach wrote: »

Including the USI.

Having read up on Monsieur Gary Redmond, and having talked to people who know Conán, I wouldn't be surprised

AndrewJD

Tragedy wrote: »

Really? And you're basing that on what? We need to pay among the best in the world, to attract mediocore/average(judging by university rankings)?

Of course! We've been blind. Let's pay lecturers less, and we'll attract better ones! You could argue they'd be lured in by better facilities etc but you'll get nowhere by slashing their salaries.

And my lecturers are grand. Dr Paul Voorheis, anyone?

http://www.biochemistry.tcd.ie/images/pvoorheis.jpg

Tragedy

AndrewJD wrote: »

Of course! We've been blind. Let's pay lecturers less, and we'll attract better ones! You could argue they'd be lured in by better facilities etc but you'll get nowhere by slashing their salaries.

And my lecturers are grand. Dr Paul Voorheis, anyone?

http://www.biochemistry.tcd.ie/images/pvoorheis.jpg

I asked you what you were basing it on, and your reply was you're basing it on a supposition that the more you pay the better quality you get? Thats it? In that case, obviously we have the among the best politicians, the best bankers and one of the best health services in Europe.

Because we pay more.

And paying more has always(or even usually) been shown to work well in Ireland.

Yes. A well thought out position.

Mark200

Tragedy wrote: »

I asked you what you were basing it on, and your reply was you're basing it on a supposition that the more you pay the better quality you get? Thats it? In that case, obviously we have the among the best politicians, the best bankers and one of the best health services in Europe.

Because we pay more.

And paying more has always(or even usually) been shown to work well in Ireland.

Yes. A well thought out position.

No, the point is that the more you pay the easier it is to attract higher quality. That's a fact, whether cuts are necessary or not. I don't know how you came to the conclusion that that logic somehow meant that every single person on a high salary is somehow supposed to be better than everyone else on a lower salary. That clearly wasn't the point, at all.

Tragedy

Mark200 wrote: »

No, the point is that the more you pay the easier it is to attract higher quality. That's a fact,

If it's a fact that the more you pay the easier it is to attract quality, why is Ireland so underrepresented when it comes to any of the top University lists?

If it's a fact, why is there no causal link between our levels of pay and our Universities international ranking/regard? If it's a fact, why don't we have more top professors/lecturers coming to Ireland from the USA/UK to take up our high paid jobs?

It's not a 'fact' that the more you pay the easier it is to attract higher quality, it's a supposition. You suppose it to be true. A fact is something you can prove - it's easy to say something is a fact, it's much harder to prove it.

I've shown that irish academia is among the highest paid in the world(a fact).

I can show that irish universities don't do well on international rankings/league tables(again, that would be a fact).

You can tell me that paying the best attracts the best, but can't show it in effect or prove it?(Hint: that wouldn't be a fact).

You also might have missed out that this was started by Andrew saying
"Because that's what they're worth."
Nothing about attracting quality easier, Andrew said that's what Irish academia is worth.

whether cuts are necessary or not. I don't know how you came to the conclusion that that logic somehow meant that every single person on a high salary is somehow supposed to be better than everyone else on a lower salary. That clearly wasn't the point, at all.

I don't recall saying that. Quote me?