Something doesn't compute

Premise: Here in Ireland the economy is in terrible shape. In the UK the economy is in bad shape. Here at third level we have introduced a ban on recruitment and promotion, and increased the student registration fee to €2000. In the UK they are implementing across the board cuts (Queen's University Belfast - QUB - is threatened with losing 25% of its staff - see
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/queens-university-lsquocould-lose-25-of-its-staff-in-cutsrsquo-15132108.html), and student fees have been raised up to £9000.

So what is going on? How come we can afford to get off so easily while the third level sector in the UK is getting absolutely hammered? Well of course to listen to the howls of protest from the third level sector here you wouldn't think we had it easy at all. And indeed the Employment Control Framework is a blunt instrument which means that all third level departments are downsizing in a haphazard and completely unplanned way. And that includes computing departments (so where exactly is the Smart Economy supposed to come from?).

It must be said that Irish Academics are still relatively well paid, particularly at the higher levels. Full professors top out at an impressive €146,00 per annum. I remember explaining this to a UK professor who was encouraging me to apply for a job over there. I recall his stunned silence. I remember getting a lift with a very distinguished and cheerful German professor and his wife, and it turned out my salary was nearly twice his. (However comparisons aren't always easy - he was happy because he was retiring, and under their system he was entitled to his full professorial salary until the day he died. Some perk!). However this differential has been corrected to an extent, as Irish Academic salaries have recently suffered a drop of about 25% by way of pension levies and the infamous Universal Social Charge.

I think Size Matters. The UK government can afford to make radical cuts as its further away from the affected nerve endings. So its easy for a UK government to force drastic cuts on QUB as the furious reaction will be local and can be ignored. You couldn't imagine a local administration making the same decision and surviving. Here in the republic you close a local hospital and you piss off a large and vociferous proportion of the electorate.

I suspect that we will be forced eventually to take much deeper cuts, much closer to the level of pain currently being experienced in the UK.

Where are our Brightest and Best?

In a shed with their arm half way up a cows arse.

Every wondered why it is so hard to find some-one in a leadership position in this country, who could unequivocally be described as "brilliant"? Why do we have such mediocre politicians and even more mediocre civil servants in positions of influence? Look around the public service, and the best you can hope for is competence, and very often we don't even get that.

Well in part it can be put down to the points system. The brightest people are attracted to the courses with the highest points, and so for example the brightest and best often become veterinarians (see above). Its a well understood phenomenom. People like to get "value" for their points, and if they have 550 points they don't want to be in a class where the entry fee is just 300 points.

Computing, despite the strong demand for good computing graduates (employers are beating my door down looking for them...) has traditionally had a low points threshold, and thus very rarely attracts the 500-points-plus student.

What to do. Well in Ireland we often develop elaborate plans, but we rarely implement them. So best to stick with something simple. There is a registration fee of €2000 coming in next year. Why not raise it to €4000 for prospective vets and reduce it to €500 for computing and engineering courses? Note that attempting to influence the "points market" is already an accepted tactic - higher maths already gets "bonus points" to encourage students to take it.

Top down or Bottom up?

Scott's law (well one of them). Some-one operating within a hierarchy believes in top-down control from their own position downwards, and bottom up control from their own position upwards.

Ironic to observe those within the Irish third level system, who themselves operate a vigorous top-down control upon those of us on the bottom rung, now complaining vociferously about the "soviet style" top-down control being exerted on the universities by the HEA and the government.

Priviliged or Talented?

It seems in this country we often mistake privilege for talent. I was just listening to two brothers on the radio who were clearly priviliged but not nearly so obviously talented - although they and their interviewer were assuming that they were. It actually must be a particular burden on the children of the talented - there is an expectation that talent is inherited, when often it is not.

In the universities of course we are solely interested in talent, irrespective of where it comes from. However with the rise in registration charges we can expect our incoming undergraduates to be more priviliged than talented. Which is a great pity. Privilege which is short on talent often comes across as full of a sense of entitlement, with no real capacity for hard work.

Making the transition to 3rd level.

To succeed in 2nd level, students must master the process of memorisation and regurgitation. Which does I guess result in a type of education and certainly prepares them adequately for the Leaving Certificate exams. Of course a subject like mathematics does not fit easily with the memorisation/regurgitation approach, but even it can be represented and examined by a kind of memorised pattern matching. Questions come in an expected format and a memorised sequence of steps gets you to the right answer (you hope).

In 3rd level the tradition is quite different. Its no longer memorisation/regurgitation, its challenge/response. Many new undergraduates find it very hard to adapt to this new way of doing things. It can be quite amusing to issue a challenge to a 1st year class and observe their bemused reaction. They want to know exactly what type of response they are expected to give. They would like model responses given to them to memorise and choose from. The want to know "is this on the exam?". If all else fails they expect to be able to Google for an answer. The idea of creatively coming up with their own response doesn't seem to occur, and they have no idea of how to go about it as nothing they have done since kindergarden has prepared them for it.

So what can we do about it at third level? Very little I would suggest. The move from 2nd to 3rd level comes at the same time when a young person moves from being a child to being an adult. As we all recall that involves all kind of challenges. Ultimately its the responsibility of the individual to successfully chart that transition. As it says in Corinthians 13:11

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. "