Besides, Krugman has not made it on to “The Simpsons” - yet, anyway. So that makes it evens.

I have studied in and worked with people from an academic environment for most of the past decade and while there are lazy people, as there are in every sector (I’ve experience of academic, public, private and voluntary sectors), no other sector has inspired me by the percentage of people with amazing amounts of initiative, essentially entrepreneurs, who work hard, go off and get the funding they need to pay for important research and - if you’re obsessed about inputs rather than outputs - do actually work all the hours they can to do that research.

If there is no discount for self citation then the system might need to be looked at.

Are you suggesting that an unscrupulous bounder might attempt to game such systems? If so, shocking.

That russian economist from TCD was on Vincent Browne a week or two ago and he made an assertion that not a single job has ever been created from our recent attempts at funding science in uni

That particular Russian economist says a lot of things (among others, claiming that Obama is a communist and frequently comparing Ireland to Cuba). I would suggest that you ask people who actually know something in each area what spin-off and new technologies have emerged, as Gurdiev (if what you say is true) appears to have no interest in Havok and others even in his own university of TCD.

I would be happy that Academics worked 48 weeks a year and a 40 hour week but I am pretty certain this is not the case in Irish Universities and Colleges of Technology. I would be surprised that any Academic actually works 2,000 hours per annum in an Irish University or College of Technology. I worked in a University for 1 year years ago and saw at first hand how few hours they worked. My daughter worked in a College for the last 3 years and advises me that the situation has not changed. Looking at the Department sites for some of the Universities the research output of a lot of Academics is abysmal. If there is good input there should/will be good output.

My question to Richard Tol is whether weeks worked is a metric in the system,and, if it is, possibly may be affecting Irish University rankings in other systems.

More generally, people should be measured by their outputs not their inputs. Time worked is an input.

(2) You are probably thinking of summer as a long period of time off for academics. If you ask the academic economists on this blog, I think they might say that it’s probably the only real time each year that they get to do uninterrupted research.

”Everyone is taught to turn up their nose at pharmaceutical, chemical,engineering type jobs but its only when we have people trained by working in industry will we see innovation emerge and a multiplicative effect in job creation result”

This is not a fair comment. Everone is not taught to turn their nose up at industrial jobs. The Chemical and Pharmaceutical Industry in Ireland has provided employment for graduates for years. PhD and other graduates have contributed extensively to the generation of IP within the companies where they are employed. Most scientists would be happy if the people they train had good careers in industry to go into.

see http://www.sciencecouncil.ie/media/asc091215_role_of_phds.pdf
for a report.

Does this tool include the number of weeks annualy actually worked by Academics ? If it does it probably explains the poor rankings for the Irish Universities.

Well, whatever your scholometric rating might be you are the first person in a long while who has spoken the plain truth and not the spin of academia and for that I thank you!

One of the problems why science funding is going nowhere is because we’ve aimed far too high in most cases and we haven’t stratified our students into sensible divisions- those few who are potentially world class, those who might not be world class but are entrepreneurial, those who would make great industrial scientists etc. Too many people with 1st class honours and a view of science that says getting published in nature is all that counts. Everyone is taught to turn up their nose at pharmaceutical, chemical,engineering type jobs but its only when we have people trained by working in industry will we see innovation emerge and a multiplicative effect in job creation result

Our pension fund was nationalized. I wish I could tell you that I am better of as a result.

@entropy
Gurdgiev may have dramatized it a bit, but I would not be surprised if the average return on public investment in R&D is indeed low. There has been no independent evaluation, so it is hard to tell. There have been a number of window dressing exercises, and even those do not impress.

(No offence, these are just the two academic names in this thread)

Scholarometrics helps to evaluate the return to this investment.”

Has anyone, not connected with a vested interest ever measured return for investment in education? That russian economist from TCD was on Vincent Browne a week or two ago and he made an assertion that not a single job has ever been created from our recent attempts at funding science in uni

Besides the pecking order of Ireland-based economists (which is of great interest to the contributors of this blog), our dear leaders continue to pour money into universities in the hope of creating academic excellence that would in turn lead to commercial success.

Scholarometrics helps to evaluate the return to this investment. The government investment has a strong disciplinary bias, so the h_f index would reveal whether this has resulted in a particularly strong improvement in the performance of the favoured disciplines.

Everybody likes to know how they are performing and how they rank. Academics don’t face the electorate and they don’t have revenue. A bit of naval gazing is inevitable.

BTW, I expect Brian Lenihan to top the poll when his own assessment comes around.

Ranking systems like this one or ideas are handy for getting an idea of who/what is influencing economics most. This site covers economics, so ranking systems for economic papers are relevant.

If anyone suggests that you need to pay more attention to the academics, read this thread.

Indeed, I never did agree that “self praise is no praise”!