Category: Higher education

Tenure

This case is an embarrassment for DCU. But I was particularly taken by the following:

He [Mr Justice Geoghegan] said he was not entering into discussion of the other two grounds, as this would have required analysis of section 25(6) of the Universities Act 1997, dealing with the dismissal of employees by universities.

Given the unusual circumstances of this case, it was not advisable that the court should give a precise meaning to that subsection, Mr Justice Geoghegan said.

“Furthermore, any such analysis would lead to a judgment as to the meaning of the word ‘tenure’,” he added. “I am satisfied that the word ‘tenure’ has different meanings and connotations partly depending on its context and partly depending on the particular understanding as usually given to it within the country in which it is used.”

He added that it did not necessarily have the same meaning in this jurisdiction as it did in the US, where it meant permanency in a university post.

If this is not what tenure means in Ireland, then perhaps someone might want to inform the academics?

Low Quality of Irish Universities Confirmed

I’ve been patiently waiting for a response to, or even a report in Ireland of, the  publication of the 2009 Shanghai  Jiao Tong Academic Ranking of World Universities.  See http://www.arwu.org/indexs.jsp.  Could this possibly be a case of socioanalytic denial? 

This is by far the most widely used ranking in the world for three reasons.  It is almost impossible to ‘game’. It is used as an information tool by internationally mobile students.   It is designed to honestly assess the evolution of the relative position of Chinese Universities: we know it’s honest because they don’t score well.  

There have been enthusiastic references in the Irish media and in this blog to other university rankings.  This is because some Irish universities appear to be important in these.  But you should be suspicious: they also rank many British universities well above obviously superior US institutions.  The apparent success of some Irish Universities is a by-product of this ludicrous outcome.

Go on:  check it out.  Has the Portarlington Institute for Science and Society got the recognition it deserves?

Steven Davis on Job Creation

Greg Mankiw links to an interesting article by Chicago Economist Steven J Davis on policies to foster job creation in the US. The article is short and to the point, and is for the most part relevant to the Irish debate. It is mostly sceptical of employer subsidies and puts forward, among other things, reduction in the minimum wage and vigorous experiments with back-to-work programmes.

More University Rankings

Quantitative analysis of science and technology is  a growing research area.  There are two university rankings based on bibilometric indicators which are worth watching:

Cybermetrics Lab has this university ranking for Top 100 universities in Europe, published in July 2009. TCD is the only Irish university in this list, ranked 49th in Europe and 169th in the world ranking. In the world ranking UC Cork is 393rd and UCD is 457th. The world rank of Irish universities can be found here.

The Centre for Science and Technology Studies of the Leiden University has constructed several university rankings based on scientific output. While based on the same data and methodological background, rankings differ depending on the focus of the impact – indicators. The Leiden ranking results 2008 can be found here.

THE-QS University Rankings 2009

The new rankings are out. All Irish universities are up. TCD at 43, UCD at 89.

To pre-empt some critique: No ranking is perfect, but each imperfect ranking correlates with each other imperfect ranking. Two universities in the top 100 is not at all bad for a country that has far less than 2/100 people in the OECD, let alone the world.