I reproduce the full text of the ECF over the page (via 9th level Ireland blog). I really would encourage people commenting to read the document first as its not very long. Some of the argument has conflated the provisions with university funding, with some people complaining about the ECF because it limits academic numbers and some people supporting it basically for the same reason. The issue is not the resourcing but rather the process of hiring in universities and the stipulation in this document that all university hiring will need to be specifically approved by a small central government committee along with similar provisions about reallocating people across institutions and so on.
Author: Liam Delaney
A book that deserves some attention from policymakers here is Edward Glaeser’s new book “Triumph of the City“. The book has nine chapters, along with an intro and conclusion. It makes the case that city-living is, in general, conducive to innovation, health and environmental protection. The nine chapters go through the role cities play in bringing people with ideas together, the role of slums in acting as a pathway from destitution, the attractiveness of cities as places to live, the health advances that have been made in cities, the benefits of building up, the role of human capital policies, and the environmental advantages of cities. Glaeser puts particular store on policies designed to build human capital in cities through education and through attracting intelligent and entrepeneurial people. Its simplifying his position somewhat but he strongly advocates building up rather than sprawl and he is a critic of the use of building projects as methods of urban renewal. Glaeser has published several highly influential articles in Economics and he really packs ideas into this readable book. If anyone has read it, or is going to read it, feel free to use this thread to talk about some of the ideas in the book as well as their relevance in Ireland.
This year’s conference is organised by UCD PhD students Alan Fernihough, Mark McGovern, Svetlana Batrakova and Rob Gillanders and will take place in UCD on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th August. Deadline for abstracts is May 30th. There will be keynotes by Professors Morgan Kelly (UCD) and Peter Neary (Oxford). Further details are available on the website (www.isne2011.com), or from the organisers. Last year’s session in TCD featured 28 sessions with over 100 speakers from 66 departments in 20 countries. There is no registration charge and unfortunately no funds for assistance with travel and accommodation.
The full text of the Hunt Report is now available on the Irish Times website linked here.
While we are on the subject of what really matters for human welfare, many people expressed approval of the government’s decision to not allow class sizes to increase further. Kevin Denny has been talking about this issue for several years and basically arguing that the evidence on class sizes is mixed at best and that it is more of a teacher workload issue than a pupil welfare and performance issue. He has just put out a paper with colleague Veruska Oppedisano testing the effect of classsizes on pupil performance. According to his results, bigger class sizes are associated with better performance in the PISA data, even controlling for a wide range of controls and using different estimation techniques. I think Kevin would be the first to say that you should be careful about overinterpreting any individual data analysis but it certainly points away from any simplistic assertions about the effects of class-sizes.