An insider's guide to education
- Minister for EducationRuairí Quinn is under intense pressure to abolish new controls on higher education recruitment. The controls apply to all staff employed in higher education, whether their posts are funded by the exchequer or not. The implications for research activity, funded privately or by the EU, are potentially disastrous.
The new rules are the worst kind of micro-management. They underline the sense among the research community that central government has not the faintest clue about their needs. The leaking of a memo from a senior civil servant – Martin Shanagher of the Department of Enterprise – in which he castigates the new measures reflects real anger among senior education figures.
The controversy has also been bad news for the Higher Education Authority (HEA), even though the measure was pushed through in the final days of the last government. The academic community looks to the HEA to protect and nurture higher education.
But – fairly or unfairly – there is an acute sense of disappointment with the HEA’s role in this controversy across the education sector.
- With graduate unemploymentsoaring, many of those leaving colleges cherish those lucrative jobs with the European Commission.
The good news? The 2011 graduate “administrator” selection procedure has just opened. The deadline for registration is April 14th.
Recruitment for 315 posts will be across the following fields: European public administration; law; economics; audit; finance and statistics. And the bad news? Last year there were 51,639 applicants; 37,329 sat the first stage computer-based reasoning tests in centres around Europe and across the world; 992 were invited to the second stage at an assessment centre in Brussels.
Just 308 candidates were successful.
- Only one mainitem on the agenda in staff rooms last week: Cheltenham. Is there a teacher in the country who is not obsessed with national hunt racing?
We hear the success of Ruby Walsh and Hurricane Fly (above) was a huge bonanza for a group of north Dublin teachers. Better still, they sent out an e-mail to fellow teachers two weeks ago that correctly forecast many winners.
- The issue stillhas to be considered by the new government, but it seems certain Quinn will reverse the decision of his predecessor, Batt O'Keeffe, to kill off the National University of Ireland (NUI).
It’s a strange decision. While the original announcement sparked a great deal of controversy, the protests appear to run out of momentum. The NUI has four constituent universities – NUI Galway, NUI Maynooth, University College Dublin and University College Cork – and five other recognised colleges. But its campaign drew only lukewarm support from UCD where senior figures talk of “escaping’’ from the NUI brand.
So why did Quinn rush to reverse the decision? Take a bow NUI chancellor and Fine Gael grandee Maurice Manning, who has been working assiduously behind the scenes.
At the height of the controversy last year, he suggested the move could still be reversed given the political instability.
At the time, few shared his confidence, but a change of government has changed everything.
teacherspet@irishtimes.com
