Government plans to control staff levels and pay at universites :O

steddyeddy

This from the journal.ie. The minister for education wants to ammend the universities act which states that universities can control staff levels and pay themselves. This is worrying for a few reasons.

Firstly I do not trust the government or any government advisor to have clue one about how to run a university, number 2 if they lower pay we wont attract the best researchers and the uni wont generate revenue from research and finally we could have the problem in unis that we have in some schools nowadays, which is the failure to fire awful teachers. Lectures are hard to get rid of once they become professors but universities have fired crap lecturers unlike some schools.

THE STUDENTS’ UNIONS at five of the country’s seven universities have criticised plans to reform the laws surrounding Ireland’s universities, which would give the government the power to centrally control pay rates for staff.
Education minister Ruairí Quinn is drafting legislation to amend the Universities Act from 1997, which gives each university’s governing authority total autonomy in relation to the number of staff that a university can hire and the amount its staff can be paid.
The proposals, which have already been approved by the cabinet, would return direct control of these to the Department of Education – a move the unions say is unnecessary and could undermine the universities’ ability to decide what courses they teach.
In a statement this evening the presidents of the students’ unions in UCD, UCC, NUI Galway, DCU and of both unions in Trinity (undergraduate and postgraduate) said the changes were “a knee-jerk and populist reaction to recent expenditure and remuneration controversies”.
Universities were already fully accountable in their spending because of their responsibility to the State’s spending watchdog, the Comptroller & Auditor General, and to the Dáil’s Public Accounts Committee, they said.
“This Bill undermines the internal control mechanisms and the ability of the Universities to innovate and develop strategies for the future”, they said, arguing that “constructive engagement” with the colleges was required instead of direct intervention by central government.
“University Management, in consultation with members of the academic staff, must be able to design and implement curricula independent from fear or realised government intervention,” they said.

This amendment threatens principle of academic autonomy and will relinquish control of such decisions to the Minister and the Department of Education.

The students cited the recent problems regarding grant distributions at SUSI – the grant processing body set up by the Department of Education to process maintenance grants for new students – as an example of how the intervention of central government could be anti-constructive.
“Irish Universities are reliant on human capital and being able to secure Academic Staff who can facilitate the highest quality learning and research among students, which in turn produces the highly skilled graduates a smart economy requires,” they concluded.

By taking away control of the most important element for success from those managing the institution and passing it to the Minister and the Civil Service the government are putting the quality of teaching and learning in Ireland in grave risk.

padd b1975

Is the Blackrock old boy ever going to get around to tackling the subsidies given to private schools?

Chuck Stone

The Universities' pay scales and staff numbers should be concomitant with their international performance which is pretty bloody average.

Also, the bankrolling of hobby degrees should be curtailed.

oppenheimer1

Irish pay at our universities by exceeds by some distance the pay at equivalent UK universities.

(You cannot compare the pay at the top UK universities with Irish ones btw, although they pay less generally, they have the added pull factor of trading on their name and reputation which allows them to do that.)

heretosay

This is a good thing. University staff are over paid.

Annasopra

heretosay wrote: »

This is a good thing. University staff are over paid.

SOME university staff are over paid

heretosay

mango salsa wrote: »

SOME university staff are over paid

True, I'll accept that.

Dwork

"Government plans to control"...i.e, lets not worry too much about this..great plans and all that..

Banjo String

I don't trust them to run a bath.

Universities.. That's off the scale though.

fasttalkerchat

My simple opinion on universities:
1. You pay €200 per module. If you fail you lose the money, if you pass you get the money back.

2. Once employment rates after one year for graduates for a certain course drops below a certain %, that course isn't eligible for free fees. Jobs below €20k or so not included.

3. All lectures are recorded and available to students and department heads online. That way its obvious where a lecturer isn't up to standard.

kowloon

mango salsa wrote: »

SOME university staff are over paid

Absolutely, higher up academic staff are being more than generously compensated while the peons are being told to do more with less.
It's pretty demoralising to hear about the Dean getting big money while you have to cover extra duties and the rest of the country are out for your blood because they only hear about the excessive salaries of the higher ups.

sock puppet

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

2. Once employment rates after one year for graduates for a certain course drops below a certain %, that course isn't eligible for free fees. Jobs below €20k or so not included.

Yeah sure who needs science.

fasttalkerchat

sock puppet wrote: »

Yeah sure who needs science.

There are many science subjects with varying levels of career prospects. Its not like in primary school where its all lumped into one class.

Gummy Panda

kowloon wrote: »

Absolutely, higher up academic staff are being more than generously compensated while the peons are being told to do more with less.
It's pretty demoralising to hear about the Dean getting big money while you have to cover extra duties and the rest of the country are out for your blood because they only hear about the excessive salaries of the higher ups.

Sounds like a job for robot house

sock puppet

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

There are many science subjects with varying levels of career prospects. Its not like in primary school where its all lumped into one class.

I'm not really sure how this post relates to mine? Most science graduates will go on to furhter study (in Trinity anyway).

Cavehill Red

Just before this thread descends into the predictable free-for-all of allegations that everyone involved in tertiary education is a lazy overpaid, ivory tower so-and-so, let me direct you all to read the Irish Times' recent article on just one academic's average working week:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/education/2013/0226/1224330507411.html
When you're done digesting that, perhaps (and I write this with heavy heart and little hope of success) people might care to wonder whether cutting funding further is likely to reverse or accelerate Irish universities' slow decline in global rankings, and whether the Minister or universities themselves best know how to manage their budgets.

kowloon

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Sounds like a job for robot house

ROBOT HOUSE!!!

20Cent

Lots of problems with this idea:

Sorry Sergi and Larry this search thing your talking about doesn't sound very commercial why not make a nice accounting program?

That Morgan Kelly fella is researching the economy again better stop that.

etc

kowloon

Cavehill Red wrote: »

Just before this thread descends into the predictable free-for-all of allegations that everyone involved in tertiary education is a lazy overpaid, ivory tower so-and-so...

The lazy types do exist, but so do the ones who work until they drop. That Times article is not representative of what gets reported or what spreads by word of mouth.
People get the impression that the few people at the top aren't on abnormally high rates of pay compared to the rest and they only hear about the academic who pawns off as much of their workload on postgrads as possible and jumps at every opportunity to sign their name to anything they can get away with.

These people are the ones that will get everyone else screwed over.

policarp

Only the cream of country get the best jobs.
Rich and Thick. . .:D

Bandana boy

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

My simple opinion on universities:
1. You pay €200 per module. If you fail you lose the money, if you pass you get the money back.

2. Once employment rates after one year for graduates for a certain course drops below a certain %, that course isn't eligible for free fees. Jobs below €20k or so not included.

3. All lectures are recorded and available to students and department heads online. That way its obvious where a lecturer isn't up to standard.

1: incentives to fail students for the universities and drive Students away from challenging course to simpler courses ,thats a great strategy for the country.

2: Follow the trend instead of get ahead of it ,what is employment for a graduate ,in their field or in Mcdonalds. What about broad fields like business.
Lok at what your suggestion would have done to IT courses in the early noughties

3 How does creating a massive database of video drive standards ? Or are you creating a new department of watching video each person who needs to be qualified enough in the field to rate the lecturer. We already have many ways of rating lecturers/measuring performance and they are results based not opinion based, and in the main they already work.

The Government stepping in here is foolish
Our uni's are not really a problem either in what they cost or the service they provide. If anything needs to be changed it is the make up of courses and that is a supply demand issue which would be far better addressed by changes to the primary and secondary school set ups.

BidillyBo

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

My simple opinion on universities:
1. You pay €200 per module. If you fail you lose the money, if you pass you get the money back.

Well in ucd they already have that its £230 for every repeat and from next year no compensation so you'll have to pass every class. Which can be hard in very broad subjects when there's one class you really don't like or get.

Merch

steddyeddy wrote: »

This from the journal.ie. The minister for education wants to ammend the universities act which states that universities can control staff levels and pay themselves. This is worrying for a few reasons.

Firstly I do not trust the government or any government advisor to have clue one about how to run a university, number 2 if they lower pay we wont attract the best researchers and the uni wont generate revenue from research and finally we could have the problem in unis that we have in some schools nowadays, which is the failure to fire awful teachers. Lectures are hard to get rid of once they become professors but universities have fired crap lecturers unlike some schools.

If only the Govt applied the same rule to themselves? didnt they just vote on some act to enshrine their own pay?

fasttalkerchat

sock puppet wrote: »

I'm not really sure how this post relates to mine? Most science graduates will go on to furhter study (in Trinity anyway).

So they're not unemployed.

a-ha

Joeytheparrot wrote: »

SOME university staff are over paid

Some are severely underpaid, or not paid regularly at all.

They are called hourly paid lecturers.

Last year, I earned less than 10k teaching at third level. This is not at all unusual.

Think about what it means for education standards, the person teaching you is not paid to prepare for class. Hourly paid or adjunct lecturers generally make the greatest possible effort that they can make to teach you well, but with very little support, no office (and therefore nowhere to meet students), being hired the Friday before the start of term for the semester, not knowing if they will be employed after Christmas, not paid over the holidays etc. The person writing your references for employers, is literally not paid for doing so and may well no longer be employed by your university by the time you contact them.

It is an uphill struggle to make up for (in unpaid labor) all of the ways in which hourly paid teaching contracts undermine the ability of the lecturer to deliver a good module to the students.

The article below describes adjunct lecturing very well. This business model is the norm in the US, where the majority of classes even in universities with fees of 40,000 a year are taught by hourly paid contingent workers. In Ireland as many as 1/4 to 1/3 of your classes are delivered using this model. The result is that you lose out. It is about time that students asked tough questions about where the money is going at third level, because it certainly in not being spent on educating you.

Bloated administrative salaries abound, university Presidents get paid like corporate CEOs, meanwhile there are increasingly few staff in the libraries, and proportionately fewer salaried lecturers who have the time or the resources to actually be there for students outside of lecture hours. The result is a hollowing out of the university. Needless to say, it is not good for the rankings - fewer and fewer academics are actually employed to publish and lecture, class sizes keep growing as student numbers increase and less and less of university budgets are devoted to education.

https://www.guernicamag.com/features/the-teaching-class/

VinLieger

padd b1975 wrote: »

Is the Blackrock old boy ever going to get around to tackling the subsidies given to private schools?

It's been shown time and again removing the subsidy would cost the tax payer more and not less