Waterford University discussion

imacman · 02-10-2015 9:46am

Some good commentary here
http://usecampaign.blogspot.ie/2015/09/another-year-when-nothing-happened-wit.html

imacman · 02-10-2015 10:05am

The TU debate in the public accounts committee this week

https://www.kildarestreet.com/committees/?id=2015-09-24a.621

More deluded commentary from the Kelly report , some interesting facts on how much he was paid for the report , its a disgrace for such a whitewash

O Riain · 02-10-2015 11:05am

imacman wrote: »

The TU debate in the public accounts committee this week

https://www.kildarestreet.com/committees/?id=2015-09-24a.621

More deluded commentary from the Kelly report , some interesting facts on how much he was paid for the report , its a disgrace for such a whitewash

At least they do comment that it is going to need resources. Maybe not emphasized enough but at least its mentioned.

imacman · 05-10-2015 1:30pm

The Sunday a league table of Irish HE institutions

WIT at number 11 , CarlowIT at 19 third from bottom.The funny thing is Carlow is still trumpeting on their website they are institute of technology of the year even though that was TWO YEARS ago.
They are 19th out of 21 with only IT Blanchardstown and Dun Laoghaire Institute below them.

http://9thlevel.ie/university-rankings/sunday-times-league-table/

imacman · 05-10-2015 1:53pm

Sunday Times Third level rankings

WIT at number 11 - ITCarlow number 19 third from bottom.

http://9thlevel.ie/university-rankings/sunday-times-league-table/

imacman · 05-10-2015 1:56pm

http://9thlevel.ie/university-rankings/sunday-times-league-table/

Johnboy1951 · 07-10-2015 10:01am

http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/45k-just-to-get-colleges-to-talk-to-each-other-about-merger-357648.html

More than €45,000 of public money is being spent just to get two third-level colleges in the south-east talking to each other about the possibility of resuming merger talks.

Wanderer78 · 07-10-2015 11:05am

this is kinna getting boring now

Jamie2k9 · 07-10-2015 1:00pm

Make sure WIT you do not start talking.

invara · 12-10-2015 11:56am

IT Carlow gets bought a site in Wexford by Howlin, two stalled buildings in Waterford still on hold.

Nothing against greater provision of services in Wexford (the data shows the county has one of the lowest higher ed participation rates), but the Wexford investment will not solve the economic woes of the south east- they are not planning to put a med school, a teacher training college there, and offer the rest of the complete educational portfolio that will stop the migration of the aspirational out of the region.

But why does this government refuse to spend a single shilling in WIT. WIT does a great job (I am an insider), coming very close to university standard in most of what it does (and in some areas clearly exceeding the Irish unis), on a budget that UCD, UCC, Trinity and the rest of them spend on polishing their nudie roman statutes. Our students deserve the same investment in their learning environment every bit as much as a Cork, Galway, Limerick or Dublin student.

fiachr_a · 12-10-2015 5:20pm

invara wrote: »

Our students deserve the same investment in their learning environment every bit as much as a Cork, Galway, Limerick or Dublin student.

Try the European Investment Bank, they gave TCD a 70 million loan recently.

invara · 12-10-2015 8:31pm

fiachr_a wrote: »

Try the European Investment Bank, they gave TCD a 70 million loan recently.

Nice idea, this government removed WIT's right to borrow for capital expenditure; the kind of borrowing that is common at all the universities and DIT (for the half a billion euro they are spending in Grangegorman).

imacman · 13-10-2015 10:08am

Also WIT has been barred from any of the recent capital spending budget announced by the government. Its depressing that the institute facilities and services for students are been stunted because of the actions of a number individuals many of who have left the institute now and the toxic organisation that is campus services .

Any money that WIT gets in the coming years will be poured into finishing the campus services white elephant of a conference center/building in the sports campus while the main campus is crying out a students services building and an engineering building.At the end of the day because of its distance from the main campus only about 10% of students will ever benefit from that facility which has become a money pit.

fiachr_a · 13-10-2015 5:33pm

They'll probably downgrade WIT to a post-leaving cert college next.

callaway92 · 13-10-2015 8:48pm

imacman wrote: »

Also WIT has been barred from any of the recent capital spending budget announced by the government. Its depressing that the institute facilities and services for students are been stunted because of the actions of a number individuals many of who have left the institute now and the toxic organisation that is campus services .

Any money that WIT gets in the coming years will be poured into finishing the campus services white elephant of a conference center/building in the sports campus while the main campus is crying out a students services building and an engineering building.At the end of the day because of its distance from the main campus only about 10% of students will ever benefit from that facility which has become a money pit.

Wow..What a joke shop

invara · 14-10-2015 12:11am

imacman wrote: »

Its depressing that the institute facilities and services for students are been stunted because of the actions of a number individuals many of who have left the institute now and the toxic organisation that is campus services .

I agree with lots of what you say imacman, but I do not agree with this. Campus services is not toxic, it is being used by those who wish to "put WIT back into its place" (with nothing more than level 6&7 training programmes). Mud has been thrown, by very powerful people (Ministers, Sec Gens and politicians on the pac), none of which stuck despite them forcing WIT to commission report after report.

The seven Irish universities have lobbied hard to get the political/central government offices to quash WIT's ambition- using any pretext.

imacman · 14-10-2015 9:34am

invara wrote: »

I agree with lots of what you say imacman, but I do not agree with this. Campus services is not toxic, it is being used by those who wish to "put WIT back into its place" (with nothing more than level 6&7 training programmes). Mud has been thrown, by very powerful people (Ministers, Sec Gens and politicians on the pac), none of which stuck despite them forcing WIT to commission report after report.

The seven Irish universities have lobbied hard to get the political/central government offices to quash WIT's ambition- using any pretext.

No Absolutely agree there is an agenda from some powerful people to hurt WIT because of the push of a university which didn't sit with the existing universities and now the whole TU debacle.My point is that the college didn't help themselves with the misspending by campus services and the previous expenses scandal.The failed sports campus building and the misjudged property spending by campus services has given those people a stick to beat us the college with.

fiachr_a · 14-10-2015 5:51pm

They upgraded WIT to an Institute of Technology and then the other colleges got the same done. That's why WIT will never be a university. Need to create a new one from scratch.

invara · 14-10-2015 7:58pm

imacman wrote: »

My point is that the college didn't help themselves with the misspending by campus services and the previous expenses scandal.The failed sports campus building and the misjudged property spending by campus services has given those people a stick to beat us the college with.

Misspending sounds pretty nasty... it kind of smacks of wrong-doing beyond misjudgement .... someone should look into it. But they did at the insistence of the PAC and they found no misspending. None.

I think it is interesting that Athlone IT built a similar sports campus and because AIT has always enjoys strong political patronage not an eye-brow was raised. Certainly the PAC did not explore it, force AIT to audit the place over and over again, stop the building mid-construction (at huge additional cost) and interfere in the organisation of the financing of it. Campus services has been a good servant of WIT for many years and if you explore the balance sheet exercise on the HEA website you can discern the large contribution it makes to WIT's asset base.

What happened here is that the department/hea changed the rules on us mid-project as part of a broader project to set our strategy back. They use any pretext to clip our wings, and certainly love this divide and conquer approach that has been working well for them for the last five years. Politicians in any other region (like Cork) would come out swinging in defence of their city jewels.....

Look at the CIT portraits "scandal" and how the PAC took little interest in the two head honchos spending a fortune on paintings of their mugs. Bottom line is that WIT is getting treated differently.

PolaroidPizza · 14-10-2015 8:01pm

there are too many universities in this country as it is. a country this small can only afford 1-2 max.
there are plenty of well funded universities in Europe screaming out for students that don't exist due to demographic pressures. time we scrapped the majority of ours, and ship the students overseas.

fuzzy dunlop · 14-10-2015 9:22pm

PolaroidPizza wrote: »

there are too many universities in this country as it is. a country this small can only afford 1-2 max.
there are plenty of well funded universities in Europe screaming out for students that don't exist due to demographic pressures. time we scrapped the majority of ours, and ship the students overseas.

Oh dear! Again this well and truly debunked nugget/nonsense.

PolaroidPizza · 15-10-2015 6:29pm

fuzzy dunlop wrote: »

Oh dear! Again this well and truly debunked nugget/nonsense.

debunked?
can we afford the universities we already have?....no absolutely not.
are there universities abroad in Europe with 1st class infrastructure, staff and research facilities....yes
are these universities seeing falling student numbers...yes

not sure where the hole in my argument lies?

O Riain · 15-10-2015 6:55pm

PolaroidPizza wrote: »

debunked?
can we afford the universities we already have?....no absolutely not.
are there universities abroad in Europe with 1st class infrastructure, staff and research facilities....yes
are these universities seeing falling student numbers...yes

not sure where the hole in my argument lies?

You expect people from the south east to move country just to go to a university?

PolaroidPizza · 15-10-2015 9:26pm

O Riain wrote: »

You expect people from the south east to move country just to go to a university?

not just the south-east.
I'm proposing we come up with a new approach to deal with the crumbling system nationwide.
the status quo obviously isn't working, and there's no reason to suspect it'll drastically improve unless a radical change is made.

O Riain · 15-10-2015 9:31pm

PolaroidPizza wrote: »

not just the south-east.
I'm proposing we come up with a new approach to deal with the crumbling system nationwide.
the status quo obviously isn't working, and there's no reason to suspect it'll drastically improve unless a radical change is made.

I'm sorry to say but that's the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard.

PolaroidPizza · 15-10-2015 9:55pm

O Riain wrote: »

I'm sorry to say but that's the most ridiculous idea I have ever heard.

trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is ridiculous...which is what we are doing by continuing to keep pouring money into the current broken system.

O Riain · 15-10-2015 10:13pm

PolaroidPizza wrote: »

trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is ridiculous...which is what we are doing by continuing to keep pouring money into the current broken system.

Tell me, aside from some regions being poorly served, how is it broken? Is it because we haven't got enough unis in the top 100?

PolaroidPizza · 15-10-2015 10:39pm

O Riain wrote: »

Tell me, aside from some regions being poorly served, how is it broken? Is it because we haven't got enough unis in the top 100?

aside from dropping in the international rankings?

how about the fact that we are using students to fill in the teaching void left by vacant posts which will not be filled? or even worse, the quantity of modules being provided is being consolidated to make up for the fact the vacant posts wont be filled.
on the rare occasion a job does get advertised...how many international candidates apply? the quantity of international CVs is usually a good measure as to how many believe they can succeed in their field from Ireland...recently it is unheard of to get a CV from North America or Europe for any such post.
on the research side, government funding has all but dried up, with the only significant research now happening in research 'hubs' or 'centres' with all funding now tied up in applied science, so that there is little or no chance the much needed publications that come from basic science will emerge to help us rise back up those rankings.

don't agree with that? how about the reports from multinational employers which state that an increasing number of irish graduates cannot compete with their foreign counterparts?

don't agree with that? what about our own Higher Education Authority stating that 40% of the countries university infrastructure is below standard?

Currently its ~ 3K in fees per year, with nearly 50% of students receiving the grant...with our student population ever increasing, and an actual decline in income for student of 20% over the last 5 years, in what way are the economics sustainable? we are paying half the students grants to go to 'free college' where the university is getting less and less revenue per student, but we want the universities to take more and more, meanwhile we cant afford to invest in the infrastructure at all?

the whole system is collapsing, but no-one wants to admit it.

O Riain · 15-10-2015 11:04pm

PolaroidPizza wrote: »

aside from dropping in the international rankings?

how about the fact that we are using students to fill in the teaching void left by vacant posts which will not be filled? or even worse, the quantity of modules being provided is being consolidated to make up for the fact the vacant posts wont be filled.
on the rare occasion a job does get advertised...how many international candidates apply? the quantity of international CVs is usually a good measure as to how many believe they can succeed in their field from Ireland...recently it is unheard of to get a CV from North America or Europe for any such post.
on the research side, government funding has all but dried up, with the only significant research now happening in research 'hubs' or 'centres' with all funding now tied up in applied science, so that there is little or no chance the much needed publications that come from basic science will emerge to help us rise back up those rankings.

don't agree with that? how about the reports from multinational employers which state that an increasing number of irish graduates cannot compete with their foreign counterparts?

don't agree with that? what about our own Higher Education Authority stating that 40% of the countries university infrastructure is below standard?

Currently its ~ 3K in fees per year, with nearly 50% of students receiving the grant...with our student population ever increasing, and an actual decline in income for student of 20% over the last 5 years, in what way are the economics sustainable? we are paying half the students grants to go to 'free college' where the university is getting less and less revenue per student, but we want the universities to take more and more, meanwhile we cant afford to invest in the infrastructure at all?

the whole system is collapsing, but no-one wants to admit it.

Most of what you have mentioned can be attributed to the fact that our economy has collapsed in the last few years and there just isn't much money floating around.

We've been exporting too much of our youth for too long, having some government system in place to facilitate this is moronic. You think they would all magically return after their studies are finished? Students bring a lot of life into the cities where they study, removing this alone from cities would turn Ireland into a dull boring hell hole.

fuzzy dunlop · 15-10-2015 11:11pm

PolaroidPizza wrote: »

debunked?
can we afford the universities we already have?....no absolutely not.
are there universities abroad in Europe with 1st class infrastructure, staff and research facilities....yes
are these universities seeing falling student numbers...yes

not sure where the hole in my argument lies?

The hole in your argument lies in the fact that you are just saying things that are totally devoid of context. Why not just close all of the Universities and throw billions of Euro at just one? That is the implication of your argument.You seem to think having a "first class" University or Universities (meaning 2) is the be all and end all. This is like saying Oxford and Cambridge exist just to have a boat race.

Waterford University discussion

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