Science and Engineering Education Cuts Coming

[dennehym]

So you support wasting large amounts of money through unnecessary duplication of services and the under utilisation of highly skilled staff. Interesting.

So you paraphrase someones arguments with your own subjective and incorrect first-order analysis of what they said in order to pose as the "winner" in a discussion. Interesting. Tell me more about what you see in this inkblot...

How many academic scholarships of a similar amount are awarded?

Far more; you can count the number of athletic scholarships in Ireland on your fingers in any given year.

My point is that we do not value scientists as highly as we value sportsmen, never mind musicians or game show hosts and until we do we will fail to attract kids into studying the subject.

I strongly agree that we do not place as high a value on hard work, study, and aptitudes for mathematics and scientific subjects and that this needs to be altered. I strongly disagree that that value is instead placed on athletes. We might see social favoring of students who are athletic up to the point of entering college, but rarely further than that; after graduation only the top two or three names ever become widely known or socially acclaimed, and none in this country are ever really rewarded as well as they would be in industry.

And I will make the point that while the kind of favoritism the US collegiate sports scene enjoys is utterly out of any sense of proportion, there is a great deal to be said for having some form of physical activity in the life of even the most cerebral of academics, if only for the health benefits (not to mention the benefits of a more active populous in the face of obesity-related illnesses overtaxing an already inadaquate healthcare system).

[Gruffalo]

So you paraphrase someones arguments with your own subjective and incorrect first-order analysis of what they said in order to pose as the "winner" in a discussion. Interesting. Tell me more about what you see in this inkblot...

So somebody points out the flaws in your argument which is not very difficult and you accuse them of posing as a "winner". Your suggestion will waste a fortune on the unnecessary duplication of services and resources. Earlier you were for establishing centres of excellence so that lecturers/researchers could excel, now you are happy for them to sit idol teaching an undersubscribed course.

I dont need to beat your argument, you are doing a fine job of that yourself.

[Gruffalo]

This is the point. We have a limited pool of talented teachers and the higher we go up the pyramid, the narrower it becomes. Reducing the number of courses should allow a concentration of teachers and improve the quality.

Very well put, centres of excellence are the way forward.

[dennehym]

Gruffalo you are being asinine. Firstly, huge amounts of funding are not being wasted at present; there are certainly claims that this is the case from the Minister, but frankly I question his assertions. It was pointed out earlier that civil service decentralisation became a parish pump politics tour de force; what makes you believe that this would be any different?

I'd also like to know why people believe that reducing course numbers will not have an effect on course costs; the simple fact is that all of the courses which the Minister is claiming to be interested in promoting for the good of the economy (engineering, medicine, science, etc) all have high per-student costs. Reduce the number of students by 50% and while you won't save 50% of the costs, you will make a significant reduction. And you will not have disrupted the research activities of the researchers involved - who, do not forget, will already be on already issued research grants. Move them from Galway to Cork and you will compromise the research that you have invested hundreds of thousands of taxpayer euros per project in. For example, the project I'm attached to is worth €400,000 and isn't very large as research projects go. Move it from TCD to even UCD and realistically you'd lose a good three months just transferring the researchers and equipment and recreating the testbed environments and setups. That's somewhere on the order of €50,000 in salary alone that you will have diverted from actually doing research to handling an unnecessary move. Move it from TCD to somewhere too far to commute to like UL or UCC and you would create even more havoc and waste even more money.

As to creating centres of excellence, you're not talking about doing that Gruff - you're talking about forcing academics to move. That will be highly inefficient and wasteful. Create the centre, provide the funding, and academics will come to you once they complete projects and fulfill commitments. Far less wasteful. It's market economy forces rather than centrally planned economic forces.

[wombat]

Far more; you can count the number of athletic scholarships in Ireland on your fingers in any given year.
.... I strongly disagree that that value is instead placed on athletes. We might see social favoring of students who are athletic up to the point of entering college, but rarely further than that;

I am surprised to hear that there are large numbers of science students getting 20k p.a. to do research, maybe there is hope for the knowledge economy.
I was not thinking of college athletics when I said we valued sportsmen more highly than scientists, I was thinking of the ambitions of primary and secondary students who would rather get a trial with Leeds Utd. than a scholarship to study physics. How about a TV show based on a young scientist competition with phone in voting? Would anyone watch?

[Gruffalo]

Gruffalo you are being asinine. Firstly, huge amounts of funding are not being wasted at present; there are certainly claims that this is the case from the Minister, but frankly I question his assertions. It was pointed out earlier that civil service decentralisation became a parish pump politics tour de force; what makes you believe that this would be any different?

I'd also like to know why people believe that reducing course numbers will not have an effect on course costs; the simple fact is that all of the courses which the Minister is claiming to be interested in promoting for the good of the economy (engineering, medicine, science, etc) all have high per-student costs. Reduce the number of students by 50% and while you won't save 50% of the costs, you will make a significant reduction. And you will not have disrupted the research activities of the researchers involved - who, do not forget, will already be on already issued research grants. Move them from Galway to Cork and you will compromise the research that you have invested hundreds of thousands of taxpayer euros per project in. For example, the project I'm attached to is worth €400,000 and isn't very large as research projects go. Move it from TCD to even UCD and realistically you'd lose a good three months just transferring the researchers and equipment and recreating the testbed environments and setups. That's somewhere on the order of €50,000 in salary alone that you will have diverted from actually doing research to handling an unnecessary move. Move it from TCD to somewhere too far to commute to like UL or UCC and you would create even more havoc and waste even more money.

As to creating centres of excellence, you're not talking about doing that Gruff - you're talking about forcing academics to move. That will be highly inefficient and wasteful. Create the centre, provide the funding, and academics will come to you once they complete projects and fulfill commitments. Far less wasteful. It's market economy forces rather than centrally planned economic forces.

Lose the decentralisation garbage, it has nothing to do with this. If anything this is more centralisation.

Centres of excellence can only be developed over time, unless you throw a vast fortune at it, and in case you have been asleep we are in a recession. Merging will improve the quality of the faculty and improve its claim to excellence, a good first step but by no means the whole thing. And it will save money.

I cannot see too much of what UCD or TCD do being disturbed. As I have said, merging should take place where course are seriously undersubscribed, not just a few short. I dont think the big Uni's will suffer too much with it. However where it is necessary it needs to be done, in a carefully planned way. For example where merging is necessary, a within city or region merger should be looked at first so as to minimise disturbance.

This is an important step to create a more effective, higher quality 3rd level education system in Ireland. The IUA and IOTI are in favour. If you think about most of the researchers in Ireland would jump at an opportunity in America in a heartbeat, they would not worry about the hassle it would cause. So we should not let them kick up a fuss about moving within Ireland to a higher quality department/faculty.

[dennehym]

Science grad students get studentships of up to about 17k, but that's tax-free. I was actually thinking however of undergrad students. In TCD for example, there's the Foundation Scholarship which gives free board and commons for four years (the last two of which are usually taken up as a grad student). That's worth a lot more than 20k and that's just to study for your primary degree. And that's just one program in one college. But there are more scholarships given out for one course in that one program in one college than there are sports scholarships given out for all of TCD, and far more in that one program in one year than sports scholarships for the entire country.

[dennehym]

Gruff, if you can't discuss it civilly, I'll not waste time being your verbal training dummy. As to dictating to academics where they'll live and work against their will, you might find yourself treated far less civilly were you to ever attempt to do so in real life, and frankly, anyone who'd consider such a Stalinesque approach to research should really research more into the efficiency (or more accurately, the wastage) of research carried out under such circumstances.

[wombat]

Science grad students get studentships of up to about 17k, but that's tax-free. ... But there are more scholarships given out for one course in that one program in one college than there are sports scholarships given out for all of TCD, and far more in that one program in one year than sports scholarships for the entire country.

I'm not really arguing, more questioning our priorities - I'm not even opposed to funding sports from lottery money as if you don't want to buy a ticket you don't have to. As far as I am aware none of our elite boxers go to college.
I would question the need for an IT in Tipperary when you have one in Waterford and a University in Limerick - is it such a great hardship to travel that distance?
As I see it, we have the same reasons for concentrating 3rd level science courses as we have for concentrating cancer treatment, the chances for a successful outcome are greater.

[Gruffalo]

Gruff, if you can't discuss it civilly, I'll not waste time being your verbal training dummy. As to dictating to academics where they'll live and work against their will, you might find yourself treated far less civilly were you to ever attempt to do so in real life, and frankly, anyone who'd consider such a Stalinesque approach to research should really research more into the efficiency (or more accurately, the wastage) of research carried out under such circumstances.

As for civility, I give back what I get (Asinine, Stalinesque, the assumption that I do not know what a lecturer is). You are yet again being full of your own self importance.

What gives academics the right to determine where their workplace will be located? Everyone else has to go where the workplace is, even our Taoiseach and President. You have not given one suggestion as to why you know better than the IUA, IOTI or the HEA but then again with your perceived self importance, why would you bother?