Assessing business schools and scholars (4)

@ Richard Tol

Two comments:

It is interesting to see that DIT business school is nearly 6 times as big as TCD (based on staff numbers). I wonder if they get 6 times as much resources! So do I believe the data?

Talk about data mining. I see that Economics is not included in UCC but it is included in places like NUIG and UL. Economics in UCC is in the Faculty of Commerce (as it is in NUIG) so why include it in NUIG and not in UCC. Come on Richard Tol lets be consistent, aren’t you meant to be a scientist!

Oh and on resources – from the state, probably, yes is the answer. Funding of universities is complex. Bloc grants, grants in liue of fees,self funded courses etc etc. Feel free to ring me for a chat.

the AP/Prof split is interesting Looking at the top published AP (yr humbl scribe) that person has more publications than all bar two of the professors, more citations than all bar 8 of the 82 and a h-index in joint 7th. Similar strange overlaps come to the fore when we look at others. Frankly, when one considers that of 82 professors here 44 or more than half have less than ten publications in total, we must ask if this rank is really being/has in the past been populated with the scholars we would need.

Alchemist
many of these are private colleges, so good luck to them. Comepition is good. TCD/UCD compete at a much much higher level than say Griffith. What is this fetish people have for dirigism in higher education?

Richard
simple way to deal with this – privatise the non public-good elements of universities…

@Brian, Richard

You miss my point about Economics. The decision to include the Economics Department in the NUIG numbers is not consistent with not including them in UCC numbers, as they both departments are members of the Faculty/School of Commerce/Business. So what is the reason?

For UCC see: http://www.ucc.ie/en/commerce/structure/#PrimaryDepts
For NUIG see: http://www.nuigalway.ie/commerce/disciplines.html

At the very least I expect from scientific work is that studies of relativity one adopts standard measures of comparison, whether it is a department being a member of the Business School or it is what defines a member of a Business School. In the case of the latter it appears that DIT definition is considerable different from that of TCD.

Leave it to economists and those in business schools to think that the number of papers is what matters, not what they say. Sausages, academic work: what’s the difference? Oh, I know: some sausages are better than others.

@Brian

This is not a post about those who publish SFA so I don’t see how your question is relevant. But since you ask: it depends on what they have published and what they will publish. In some disciplines, the dominant form of research is the book, not the journal article (despite efforts to make these little bite-sized pieces the norm everywhere). Books take years for most scholars. Quality books may take many years. Groundbreaking works can take decades. Ireland is fast becoming a place where nobody doing that kind of work will be allowed to continue. They will be replaced with busy worker bees, churning out the pointless makework that nobody will ever read. If you read that link, you’ll see that overpublication is becoming a real issue in the US. As with so much else, Ireland is hopelessly retrograde in its frenetic quest for ever more more MORE publications.

But let me ask you a couple of questions in turn: do you think that someone who publishes 15 papers is a better academic than someone who publishes only one? Or do you think that the comparative evaluation of these two hypothetical academics cannot be carried out unless and until an expert in the field has actually read what they produced? If the latter, then why do you credit such idiotic studies?

Ernie
Well, the dominant mode of scholarly discourse is journal publication, not monographs nor books, in Bschools. So, we can compare like wth like
And it is in part about those that publish SFA. Look at the data. Some half the staff do not engage, and a good portion of those are in situ for a loooong time, with the above mode of discourse. So, what are they doing? You and I know well that in general its nothing much – the leading publishers also do lots of admin and at least the average amount of teaching
So, how long, and bearing in mind the mode of discourse, do we wait for someone to engage? Should they in fact be promoted to SL AT ALL never mind AP/P with no such engagement? No.
as to impact – thats a far more complex, nuanced and difficutl issue.
to your questions
o you think that someone who publishes 15 papers is a better academic than someone who publishes only one?
yes I do, at least as a working hypothesis. Even if someone publishes one Journal of Finance paper and nothing else I would say the person, ceteris paribus, who publishes 15 Applied Financial Economics/J Multinational financial Management is a better academic. Ceteris paribus remember

Or do you think that the comparative evaluation of these two hypothetical academics cannot be carried out unless and until an expert in the field has actually read what they produced?
No. I dont need to read them all nor does Richard. Again, we have pretty good ordinal rankings of impact/import/importance/perception/quality for journals so I think that people at least in the broad field can look an most will say “yep, that one on the top end is someone that I kinda suspect is a better academic than the one on the end”.
If the latter, then why do you credit such idiotic studies?
Because i come out well…..:)

@Brian

Ceteris paribus? Do you always change the terms of the questions you’re asked before you answer them? I didn’t say ceteris paribus because the study in question and the views expressed by you don’t purport to address the “other things” that are “equal,” like, say, whether the articles in question were published by a genius or a moron (and please don’t tell me that moronic articles aren’t published every day). I asked whether, knowing nothing else about the two scholars, one who publishes 15 articles a year is a better academic than one who publishes 1.

How about Wittgenstein? Was he a better scholar than you are?

@Richard:
“Privatizing higher education is a few steps too far for Ireland. We do not even dare charge proper fees.”

Actually, third-level business education is probably the area with the highest proportion of private-sector provision in Ireland.

I suspect that most of the private-sector colleges and at least some of the undergraduate courses in the ITs (former RTCs) and in the two newer universities (from when they were NIHEs) had their origins in professional courses for one institute or another. I presume too that some courses still require accreditation from such institutes. Longer-serving staff may not have been required to publish in the past.

bjg

BJ
“Longer-serving staff may not have been required to publish in the past.”
yes, probably so. But then one has to wonder what they were required to do

@BL:
“one has to wonder what they were required to do”

Teach, teach, teach (16 hours a week, IIRC, in the VEC sector, from which the ITs have not yet entirely escaped). And, on promotion, administer (not manage, as it’s practically impossible to do that within VEC organisations).

There is a certain simplicity in having a set of bodies to teach business courses, with syllabi laid down elsewhere and no requirement for new things. But that might not meet the needs of younger academic staff.

Someone has to run departments, though, and it’s difficult to see how anyone could get time to do that and teach and research and publish.

bjg

BJ
also, for the most part for the last 5-7 years most universities have provided excellent school level administrators (not secretaries). Pamela runs the BSchool as well as anything involving academics can be run

@ Ernie
At this stage, you’d probably have a book from all the posts here!
Why not channel your efforts to something more productive and publish on what you believe and articulate here!
@ BL
Congratulations, but let other people polish your medals for you!!!
You also may reveal your youthishness when you ask what the oldies got up to in the days before student supports and other offices, IT support and infrastructure, emails and other rapid communications, etc, etc.
Further, it may have been the done thing years ago to be seen to running a department well rather than juggling…
Times they are a changing!!

@Richard

I don’t think that the logical conclusion is to drop economics from Galway, especially when they are one of the departments that make up the business school. Surely, the logical implication is that you should include the department of economics in the UCC figures?

The same point be made over and over.
The same article being referred to over and over.

@ Ernie Ball

Well, to continue the flattery – and despite the fact that, according to your website, “Ernie Ball is the nom de guerre of a UCD lecturer in a humanities subject” — you do have a point when you challenge the primacy of quantity over quality in the graves of academe.

And yes, a few lines of Wittgenstein are worth more than an ocean of garbage from the Burger King Academy of Business Studies.

@Carolus G
“If there is one thing that emerges clearly from Richard Tol’s paper, it is that there are far too many business scholars in Ireland. Or rather, the term ’scholar’ — being normally reserved to designate individuals who have made a genuine contribution to knowledge — is a misnomer. Let us say that most of that whopping total of 748 ’scholars’ are teaching staff who have benefited from job-title inflation.”

I didn’t pick up on the number. Is it high? If the (public sector) IOTs are added, how many business scholars are there? Do these number compare favourably/generously/meanly with EU countries, especially small populations countries?

Yes, Al, absolutely right. Wittgenstein lacked the discipline of a Brian Lucey….

@Richard:
“Majikthise is a philosopher. He makes his appearance along with Vroomfondel as a representative of the Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries and other Professional Thinking Persons in order to protest a demarcation dispute against Deep Thought, the computer which is being asked to determine the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, and to demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty. He, along with Vroomfondel, maintains that the search for ultimate truth is the inalienable prerogative of your working thinkers.”

From http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Majikthise

bjg

@Richard
I do not see Dr. Constantin Gurdgiev in your database. Is it not the case that he is a lecturer in TCD Business School?

@ BL
Ernies too busy, too busy working on the novel, the book, where the Hero’s proclamations are ignored, her views castigated, her journey towards vindication and redemption, you know…..

If we include ucc economists in ucc bschool, why not ucd/Tcd economists in their numbers?

@Lucey
Because Departments of Economics in TCD/UCD are not in the Business School. Surely if you are looking at the performance of Business Schools you consider the Departments/Groups that make up the Business School. What other definition do you use?

@Richard
I know it is not easy to define a Business School but I do think that it is important that a consistent approach is adopted, especially as this type of paper is likely to grab the attention of the media. For example, although it looks like MIS dominates UCC business school, economics is larger and would, i expect, improve UCC’s rating and put MIS in more of a context. In the reverse, taking economics out of UL and NUIG will result is these respective Business School moving down the pecking order.

As a suggestion, I would seek a definition from the Dean of each “Business School” as to what discipline defines their School. However, I would imagine that UL/NUIG/UCC all say that economics is a primary discipline in their school. I believe that in the case of QUB (and the same is for a lot of other UK universities) they have included in their RAE “Business and Management Studies” area their academic staff in economics, econometrics, finance and accounting, rather than separating them out into the RAE for “Economics and Econometrics” or “Accounting and Finance” categories. It is the choice of the Dean in their universities.

Ireland’s greatest mathematician (probably) was Hamilton who was Andrews’ Professor of Astronomy in TCD. He did very little work (if any) in astronomy and is not remembered in that discipline at all. If you carried out a similar study for his period you would miss out on Hamilton, which is hardly what somebody looking for information wants? In fact there is a whole section of Webb & McDowell’s history of TCD that deals with academics whose lasting contributions are not in the area/discipline they were employed in (and most often remained in). I’m told by some historians that today 2 of the best historians in UCD are not in the history department (e.g. Cormac O’Grada). Would he be excluded by your methodology?

Surely the survey should count the people in the university/institute contributing to a discipline, aswell as the number of people in the named department?

Does the assessment of Brian Lucey include his publication in the Independent which has the quote below?

It was cited a lot too…

http://www.independent.ie/business/keeping-it-alive-will-cost-an-arm-and-a-leg-with-any-upside-hard-to-ascertain-2120306.html

“Anglo can be wound up cheaply — here’s how. Sell the €28bn deposit
book.

This is a regular event in banking, and even if it has to take a discount
of 25pc that would yield €21bn. Sell the bonds and withdraw deposits in
other banks. This gives a further €14bn, a total of €35bn, that is
sufficient to cover the senior bondholders (€13bn) and the interbank
deposits with NAMA (€16bn), with €6bn left over. ”

http://www.askaboutmoney.com/showthread.php?t=135559

@Peadar Coleman

Thing about someone like Hamilton is that they manage to think something up that is genuinely extraordinary. You (if you are into the subject) can look at it and honestly say that it is amazing that anyone could actually have worked that out, as an original piece of thought. There are hardly any Hamiltons, it is all very incremental.

However, on the publishing point…..

…….”Besides all this, Hamilton was a voluminous correspondent. Often a single letter of Hamilton’s occupied from fifty to a hundred or more closely written pages, all devoted to the minute consideration of every feature of some particular problem; for it was one of the peculiar characteristics of Hamilton’s mind never to be satisfied with a general understanding of a question…..”

Oh John, meant to mention. Is Brendan B still advocating garnisheeing deposits on AAM and still banning discussion on house prices? As bad as things get lets not go there…..back you go now.

@Brian Lucey,

I am not BW2, and I know nothing of Brendan B except what I read in his posts on that link, which I first came across last April/May when looking for your article after my retired father told me about listening, with disbelief, to you on the radio saying to sell the deposit book – he did this by way of both complaining about the country being “full of experts” and to have a jibe at my alma mater because you are a tcd academic. I never heard the interview on the radio but I did read your article, and read reports of people who heard you on the radio.

You have never explained/acknowledged if this was a mistake/slip (“could happen a bishop”) or not. If not, could you please explain it? Or else just say it was a slip, which would be ok too, we’re all human(except ‘sockpuppets’, maybe)

Pretty sure there’s a mistake with person in cell 194 – first pub should be in 2001, not 2008, hence the 45 citations to date.

http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a713769712