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How could the college save money?

banquo

There's a bit of a debate going on on Facebook about fees, etc, and discussion has (sort of) moved on to the wise spending of money.

So: where do you think the college could save moolah? Ever saw something (a gold statue of John Hughes, perhaps) and think ''What an absolute was of cash!''? What do you think has been money spent on crap?

I'll throw mine in: hosting the email service (sorry, my mistake, ''webmail'') when Google will do it for free. We all keep our name.surname@nuim.ie usernames, all that changes is the interface of you inbox from NUIM Webmail to GMail.

Facebook group is here.

It's free. FREE! Also, PACR are losing money on those top-up print cards. Best just replace the student card, library printing card and PACR printing card with a single 'one-card-for-everything'. Saves money all over the board.

If they made the printers in the libary automatically delete stuff from their memory after printing then printing there would be way faster and more reliable, and fewer students would do their printing at home or in the town. Mo business means mo money.

So what ideas do other people have? OpenOffice to replace the MS Office licence? Aldi computers? Imitation gruel?

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sudzy

banquo wrote: »

Not a way to save money, but a general improvement idea. Just putting it out there.

Every so often you meet someone who passed all their modules except one. They get 36% in some module that for some reason won't let you pass by comp and you have to take a whole year to do it again. This always seemed like a painfully stupid waste of time to me.

I know that other colleges allows students to tack this module onto their next year. IE Someone who failed a module in first year could take it with their second year modules. There are timetable problems there obviously, but they would just get the assignments and exam date. Also access to the Moodle page.

Now, I don't mean for people who failed everything, or even a few things. There could be a cap of, say, two modules at the most that you could carry into the next year. This was you're not lowering the bar, and the student saves time and money.

Would this work for NUIM? Thoughts?

This is the exact boat im in! Awful stupid if ya ask me!:(

banquo

To Union Council it is!

John

What other colleges allow you take a failed module from one year in the following year? I've never heard of any college doing that. And to be honest, if you don't want to repeat the year and pay money, pass all your modules.

banquo

I see what you're saying. People should study and pass or face the consequences - I've been ranting about low standards since I got here. However, sometimes **** goes wrong and someone ends up failing a repeat exam.

Blame the student if we like, and I've no sympathy for wasters myself. But this is really about choice. When it happens, which is the better policy to have? If we allowed the carry-over, the student would still have to do the module and pass. There's no getting out of it for them. But it would save them a year of their lives. They could graduate with their friends.

As a disincentive, they should probably have to pay the cost of the repeated module as they take it with the next year of study.

banquo

*stupid double post*

pisslips

As unpopular as it would be parking disks do make sense, the securities guys are always walking around regularly anyway.

Might stop the mess of an improvised carpark on the lane to logic house or that joke on north campus.Which no doubt costs money to maintain and supervise.

I was in classes of 10 even in first, it seems those guys were getting paid a serious amount for teaching 10 1st years.Surely for example , double maths 1st year linear algebra and second year science linear algebra could be combined into one class of linear algebra? I know for example modules can be taught differently but surely there could be a compromise. And good god if you've ever done both maths and maths physics, I don't know in how many classes you'll be told about basic calculus, like cross products and 3 dimensional integrals and more linear algebra, can they not combine a lot of modules and have bigger classes?
And I bet the engineers have their own version too.

I'm sure too that we could all learn one basic numerical computing course instead of computer science, maths, experimental physics,maths physics, maybe bioinformatics? and god knows who else......can we not all use one algebra package in one class????maybe more advanced courses would be run seperately.

Like do psychologists and mathematicians seperatly learn statistical packages, and there's got to be more

I'm not just picking on a couple of departments it's just my only experience, i'm sure there's loads of overlap between loads of courses.
I mean isn't it crazy when early undergraduates only need a general understanding of how to use general tools to solve general problems, that many different departments teach the same general knowledge using pointlessly specific software or whatever.

You could host great wedding parties in that college and have lots of paying guests in the rooms during the summer. Not sure if a university wants to go for that though.

banquo

Good post on the lectures.

Actually, they do host weddings, etc. But they're pitifully advertised. Also you need a certain level of qualification from here. Masters I think.

John

pisslips wrote: »

have lots of paying guests in the rooms during the summer. Not sure if a university wants to go for that though.

The student residences and college facilities are rented out to a summer camp for Spanish and Italian students for a couple of months during the summer.

Effluo

Sweetcorn01 wrote: »

I've said this with the people in mind who drive from local housing estates that are within walking distance

banquo

Effluo wrote: »

+1

There are soooo many of these:mad:

Holda

Effluo wrote: »

I think there should definitely be more of a "green" inititive around the college, we're students and we should be showing the way forward for the rest of the country the way forward to being more energy efficient and lets not forget the real cost benefits to this too!

Why can't they build a windmill as they're building the new arts block? We've an entire engineering section in the college, I'm sure they could work something out and have some green energy flowing through the college, and not just the Heineken kind. That may seem a bit excessive, but I'm sure with all the scientists and engineers, and well Green hippies going around NUIM we could work something out.

That combined card sounds great. Even if it's too costly to change all existing cards, they could at least start it off with the new first years and eventually phase the old cards out.

banquo

John Shevlin, one of last year's presidential candidates for the SU, suggested the windmill in his campaign.

Might not be as 'out-there' as it sounds. Finding somewhere to put it would be the main problem - bit of an eyesore!

Ostrom

Holda wrote: »

Why can't they build a windmill as they're building the new arts block? We've an entire engineering section in the college, I'm sure they could work something out and have some green energy flowing through the college, and not just the Heineken kind. That may seem a bit excessive, but I'm sure with all the scientists and engineers, and well Green hippies going around NUIM we could work something out.

That combined card sounds great. Even if it's too costly to change all existing cards, they could at least start it off with the new first years and eventually phase the old cards out.

This almost got the go ahead at WIT just before I left a few years back. There are specific contractors with the appropriate expertise who construct and maintain these, any costs saved by in-house design would be taken up with later maintenance I would imagine.

I don’t know if the card system really does anything to save money, it certainly didn’t in WIT. It needs full re-fitting of all cashpoints, new vending machines, new photocopiers, new card dispensers, new staff to maintain and repair. And of course, this being NUIM, we couldn’t have it without the appropriate consultancy reports…

Top end salaries and bull**** admin positions are the way to cut corners I think. That and wasteful printing – we spend a fortune on paper.

banquo wrote: »

John Shevlin, one of last year's presidential candidates for the SU, suggested the windmill in his campaign.

Might not be as 'out-there' as it sounds. Finding somewhere to put it would be the main problem - bit of an eyesore!

The WIT one didn’t even make it to oral hearing as best I remember.

banquo

efla wrote: »

That and wasteful printing – we spend a fortune on paper.

One sentence: Double-sided printing as standard.

Ostrom

And online submission where possible

banquo

efla wrote: »

And online submission where possible

Been screaming about this at full volume for years. Response?

1. ''Ah yeah but.. *exasperated sigh*.. like, you've to like print them off and stuff and, like, it's just easier for me if you hand it up.''

2. ''Why should that be my problem?''

(Because you get paid, asshole)

LeixlipRed

They could cut my hours. Which they done. So money saved

joxer23

banquo wrote: »

Been screaming about this at full volume for years. Response?

1. ''Ah yeah but.. *exasperated sigh*.. like, you've to like print them off and stuff and, like, it's just easier for me if you hand it up.''

2. ''Why should that be my problem?''

(Because you get paid, asshole)

If you want to save the college money, then expecting them to pay for the printing of 1000s of student essays isn't helping much. Plus, online submission doesn't allow for a secure 'check in' system which will show who has submitted and who hasn't: or at least, not without buying new software, which would also cost the college money.

pisslips

One of my lecturers did it for my course in Dublin, I'm pretty sure its freeware and took him about 2 days to set up, from the time he said he'd do it, so god knows, maybe two hours it took one man, who admittedly is a programmer but he only does numerical stuff anyway, theres know way it's his software.
How many computer literate people are in NUIM?

Ostrom

banquo wrote: »

Been screaming about this at full volume for years. Response?

1. ''Ah yeah but.. *exasperated sigh*.. like, you've to like print them off and stuff and, like, it's just easier for me if you hand it up.''

2. ''Why should that be my problem?''

(Because you get paid, asshole)

This goes to departmental policy also, as most are bound to keep copies of assignments for a year and a day. Also, we are not allowed discriminate against those who may be less capable with computers. One solution to all seems to be mandatory ECDL within first semester, or some equivalent and some sort of disclaimer signed at the start of the year about students responsibility to keep backups of work.

hairy cake

Another thing - very difficult to deal with a large number of files - even 100 word docs would be tricky, some would have some odd filename, some without names at all... Even if they were all clearly named, how are you going to return even comments, never mind corrections???

One of these sounds great in theory, sucks in practice 'solutions'!

Ostrom

hairy cake wrote: »

Another thing - very difficult to deal with a large number of files - even 100 word docs would be tricky, some would have some odd filename, some without names at all... Even if they were all clearly named, how are you going to return even comments, never mind corrections???

One of these sounds great in theory, sucks in practice 'solutions'!

I did it in DCU via. moodle last year and it worked fine. You can arrange to have designated sequential filenames, or partition some email space and ask students to name their files with last name first. Its not that difficult. Moodle also lets you return comments as you grade, which saves time for both lecturer and student. If they are submitted through turnitin, it is even quicker.

banquo

Turnitin is a great service an is already used by a few college departments. It allows for marking, comments, takes up no physical space and is free.

Bam.

Also, regarding having to pay for stuff to be installed: We already have a computer centre, don't we? I'll assume that there are, y'know, staff employed there. It would be their job to arrange and install any new stuff. They're paid to do it. In fact, as far as I can tell it migh be the first thing they were ever paid to do. Until last semester we had IE5 on all campus machines. Like, wtf? How hard is it to update to a new browser? You don't even have to go around every pc, all PACR and library PCs work off a ghost*. Fair enough we have IE8 now, and Chrome is probably a luxury, but it still says alot about someone's (whosever job it is, may not be the computer centre to be fair) dedication to providing the best possible service for their salary.

And MS Office 2003. Like, what the fcuk? I mean what the fcuking fcuk?! It's seven years old now. Since the latest office release it's been screwing over 1st years' and matures' autumn assignments. Why the hell can't I use a PC on campus without wanting to beat the living crap out someone? And the printing queues in the library. Here's a hint people: turn on automatic post-print deletion and save us all 20 minutes of queuing.

Can we swap the team of people whose job it is to run these things with the team Trinity has?

*One 'main' hard drive that is copied to all campus PCs. So if you change something on this one computer then it changes all the other computers too.

K4t

The new arts block being built adjacent to JH has its lights left on all night long. It's like a little town.

I walked past the common room I think it was the other night and there were two flat screen tvs showing sky news with the room completely empty and most likely closed up for the night.

I know these are only small things but if you add them all up I'm sure you get a fairly sizeable figure over the course of a year.

Ostrom

New arts block?

banquo

New postgraduate research building. You'll find all the details in the recent Print. Even got the architect's CV