Madam, - Alison Donnelly (Letters, May 7th,) highlights one issue related to the current emphasis on fourth-level education programmes in our universities, namely, the lack of opportunities for future graduates from such programmes.
There is a related issue, however, which may have implications for many more people: that is, the transfer of education resources from third level to fourth level.
In its wisdom, Trinity College, or those that drive it these days, has taken a conscious decision to promote research activities at the expense of undergraduate teaching and has restructured its resource allocation model to bring this about.
I understand that similar decisions have been taken in at least two other colleges.
While I fully support moves to increase and improve research activity, I take grave exception to doing so at the expense of undergraduate education.
Trinity College is proud of its undergraduate education record and much effort and commitment has been invested by its staff to make it as good as it is.
Many staff are engaged in continuing improvement of undergraduate education.
However, under the new resource allocation model, this will become a thing of the past and the quality of our undergraduate education will decline, with reductions in small group teaching, continuous assessment and inter disciplinary collaboration, among others.
There is also likely to be an increase in the use of part-time teachers, as full-time academics who were hired to do the job will instead be diverted into more research or not replaced on retirement.
While part-time teaching per se is not a bad thing, and I have known several excellent part time teachers, an over-reliance on part-time teaching cannot be good for the students' learning experience.
Given the Government's oft repeated statement that we need more high-quality graduates to feed the new knowledge-based economy, this unilateral move by the Trinity College authorities can hardly be good news for the Government.
However, the Government itself is responsible for another major dilemma facing undergraduate education in all our universities, that is, the series of cuts in third-level funding made by former minister for education Noel Dempsey.
These cuts have put a huge hole in resources available for undergraduate education which will continue until the level of funding is adjusted upwards again to reverse the cuts.
This is in addition to the refusal by the Government to cover the costs incurred by all third-level institutions in paying for the benchmarking awards which the Government itself ordained. - Yours, etc,
Dr MICHAEL STUART, Department of Statistics, Trinity College, Dublin.