Does academia have questions to answer for the current Irish recession?

Slideshowbob

I think it is a pertinent question as 3rd level is well supported here and elsewhere yet its teachings have gone virtually unquestioned in relation to the failings of the "system" over the past few years.

And to move the debate on, which area of academia played the most significant part?

Law?
Politics?
Property?
Construction?
Planning?
Finance?
Commerce?
Philosophy?

Am I missing any?

Cannibal Ox

Slideshowbob wrote:

Am I missing any?

Economics :pac:


Do you mean in terms of the work that academics were producing? Do you mean in terms of what they were teaching students? Or the kind of advise they were giving policy makers?

Wage packets could've been a little less...bloated.

Mario007

Slideshowbob wrote: »

I think it is a pertinent question as 3rd level is well supported here and elsewhere yet its teachings have gone virtually unquestioned in relation to the failings of the "system" over the past few years.

And to move the debate on, which area of academia played the most significant part?

Law?
Politics?
Property?
Construction?
Planning?
Finance?
Commerce?
Philosophy?

Am I missing any?

As a law student I can tell you that academia have not been listened to at all. In fact, in Ireland the media seems to almost block out all the academics and thus helps the government greatly.
I've been reading law articles written in 1996 that state that if the laws in the country in relation to building and planning permissions and mortgages will continue to be loosened up by the government then we are going to face a huge economic crisis. I've seen articles from recent years that point to various holes in laws or their inadequate drafting and yet the Dail does nothing about it.
So to answer your question no, academia doesn't need to answer for the recession at all.

dissed doc

Slideshowbob wrote: »

I think it is a pertinent question as 3rd level is well supported here and elsewhere yet its teachings have gone virtually unquestioned in relation to the failings of the "system" over the past few years.

And to move the debate on, which area of academia played the most significant part?

Law?
Politics?
Property?
Construction?
Planning?
Finance?
Commerce?
Philosophy?

Am I missing any?

LOL!

Academics are scorned in Ireland and mostly ignored or at worst ridiculed and bullied. Ignore doctors with regards to how to run a health service, ignore economists with regard to the economy, etc., it's a long-standing pattern.

Ireland is basically like that movie Idiocracy.

Slideshowbob

Cannibal Ox wrote: »

"Slideshowbob&#34 wrote:

Am I missing any?

Economics :pac:


Do you mean in terms of the work that academics were producing? Do you mean in terms of what they were teaching students? Or the kind of advise they were giving policy makers?

Wage packets could've been a little less...bloated.

I mean in terms of the skills, knowledge and awareness acquired by graduates as they commenced their careers

Slideshowbob

Mario007 wrote: »

Slideshowbob wrote: »

I think it is a pertinent question as 3rd level is well supported here and elsewhere yet its teachings have gone virtually unquestioned in relation to the failings of the "system" over the past few years.

And to move the debate on, which area of academia played the most significant part?

Law?
Politics?
Property?
Construction?
Planning?
Finance?
Commerce?
Philosophy?

Am I missing any?

As a law student I can tell you that academia have not been listened to at all. In fact, in Ireland the media seems to almost block out all the academics and thus helps the government greatly.
I've been reading law articles written in 1996 that state that if the laws in the country in relation to building and planning permissions and mortgages will continue to be loosened up by the government then we are going to face a huge economic crisis. I've seen articles from recent years that point to various holes in laws or their inadequate drafting and yet the Dail does nothing about it.
So to answer your question no, academia doesn't need to answer for the recession at all.

So did academia not spread their message succinctly enough then?

Where did politicians get their learning? !!

Fremen

Slideshowbob wrote: »

3rd level is well supported here and elsewhere yet its teachings have gone virtually unquestioned in relation to the failings of the "system" over the past few years.

Maybe I'm just being thick, but that sentence doesn't mean anything to me. What teachings? What system?

Academics are infamous for disagreeing with one another. There's no single "message" being sent from some united body of scholars that collectively make up "academia".

Mario007

Slideshowbob wrote: »

So did academia not spread their message succinctly enough then?

Where did politicians get their learning? !!

They publish articles, they write to the government but if the people in the Dail want to ignore them there's no much you do. The media only helps this, really. They inform about murder or burglary in the country (speaking in hyperbole here) but never actually inform much about the academic criticism. In 2009 a new law was passed that fundamentally changed the Irish property law regime and did it get a mention in the media? Not at all. In 2010 a new regime for banks and mortgages was created and did that get a mention? Yet again, it didn't.
There's only so much you can do as a person to get your voice heard and academics aren't the type of people that would organise mass protests.

As for your second question, it's irrelevant really. If there was a requirement that a politician has to have a 2.1 college degree then we could talk about it, but as it stands now anyone can be elected. And we don't know whether they went through college having to repeat every exam or actually gotten 1H degrees.

swampgas

Slideshowbob wrote: »

I think it is a pertinent question as 3rd level is well supported here and elsewhere yet its teachings have gone virtually unquestioned in relation to the failings of the "system" over the past few years.

And to move the debate on, which area of academia played the most significant part?

Law?
Politics?
Property?
Construction?
Planning?
Finance?
Commerce?
Philosophy?

Am I missing any?

I will openly admit that I joined the workforce financially illiterate. My parents never discussed money or finance - you got the impression it was taboo - and I had taken no real interest in it myself, as I simply never had enough money before then to worry about it. On top of that, I never studied economics or accountancy or any business related subject. I understood compound interest though, as I was pretty good at maths.

As a result I had no idea how basic finance worked, and I made some very poor decisions early on. It took me a while to realise that saving a few bob out of my wages might actually be a good thing, crazy as that might sound.

Now this was all before the internet and Google/Wikipedia, so I guess had I really wanted to know more I could have taken myself down to the library and done some reading, but that didn't really appeal to me at the time.

Fortunately for me I met a girl (who would become my wife) who worked in finance. I remember hearing the concept of opportunity cost for the first time and being blown away by it - that's how naive I was.

For all that some posters like to say the bubble was obvious, it wasn't to many - you need a few basic concepts before you can start to see it for yourself.

Personally I would have been thrilled had secondary school included a few classes on basic personal finances, covering budgeting, banking, credit cards, savings, pensions, mortgages and so on - the run of the mill stuff that most people have to deal with. Some information on the history of property bubbles would have been great but maybe too much to have hoped for in the 80's.

In another 10 years the schoolkids of today will be out there looking to buy houses - maybe basic financial knowledge is too important to be left to their parents to impart?

Anyhow, it's just an idea - maybe the schools do something like this already.

Icepick

dissed doc wrote: »

Ignore doctors with regards to how to run a health service, ignore economists with regard to the economy, etc., it's a long-standing pattern.

Doctors are not managers. They are not educated to to run a health service.


I don't know about Ireland, but prominent members of the US academia were in on the scam. See Inside Job.

dissed doc

Icepick wrote: »

Doctors are not managers. They are not educated to to run a health service.


I don't know about Ireland, but prominent members of the US academia were in on the scam. See Inside Job.

Ummm, doctors are in management positions in most of the successful health services we hear about in europe for example, Germany, netherlands, etc., . But you will likely keep believing that top heavy administration is the key. When you look around the health service, education services, police, it's the same british civil service administration style. No surprise that it doesn't work as the management style was only primarily there to ensure transfer of resources.

it's primarily exclusive to the anglophone countries that we have non-medical "managers" which manage it into the ground.