Trinity Provost Prendergast's Speech on Irish Higher Education

Provost Prendergast deserves a lot of credit for speaking the truth. On the introduction of fees, he said, “We have no right to mortgage future generations by dodging this issue. They will not thank us. And we have no right to prevent those who want a quality education from paying for it if they can afford to do so. The reality is that if the best students can’t get a top quality higher education here, they will go abroad for it and they would be right to do so.”

Even more important are his remarks on autonomy: "We need to release some of the constraints acting on higher education. To compete globally, I need to have flexibility and decision-making powers, the same flexibility that other presidents of leading universities can count on, particularly with regard to hiring and promotions.
At the moment I need to get permission for what I do.”

Prof. Prendergast is right: we cannot have a higher education system that is treated like a regular state bureaucracy and expect it to compete with good international universities.

Elite Academic Credentials = Top Jobs

CNN has an article based on a new study by a professor at Northwestern showing the chokehold of those with elite academic credentials on elite jobs at Wall Street banks, law firms, and management consultancies: "elite professional service employers" rely more on academic pedigree than any other factor. For recruiters, it's prestige that counts, rather than "content" like grades, courses, internships, or other actual performance. That's because if you got into a "super-elite" school -- which essentially means Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Wharton (University of Pennsylvania), and Stanford -- you must be smart. Plus, time spent at those bastions in turn will make you "polished" and attractive to corporate clients. It is, according to Rivera, a largely self-perpetuating hiring process that prizes efficiency: Why spend effort looking for "that one needle in the haystack" at a "safety school" like the University of Michigan or, heavens forfend, Bowling Green, when the run-of-the-mill Yalie's still a prince. Even "second-tier" Ivies like Brown, according to Rivera, are suspect for the top firms.

This conforms with my own experience. Legal academia, at least in the US, is also very focussed on elite credentials. This does not happen as much in the UK probably because there isn't a large enough supply of candidates with elite credentials for jobs in law schools. Anecdotally, many candidates with doctoral degrees from Oxford and Cambridge - which have small cohorts in any case - seem to seek jobs in law firms, international organizations, etc.

New Study on the Value of a College Education

There has been a lot of noise in the U.S. and elsewhere in recent years about the rising cost of a college education and whether the returns justify the investment. This article in the NYT, referencing a new study conducted at Georgetown University, shows why it is still worth it:
... the returns from a degree have soared. Three decades ago, full-time workers with a bachelor’s degree made 40 percent more than those with only a high-school diploma. Last year, the gap reached 83 percent. College graduates, though hardly immune from the downturn, are also far less likely to be unemployed than non-graduates. ...

The Hamilton Project, a research group in Washington, [which] has just finished a comparison of college with other investments ... found that college tuition in recent decades has delivered an inflation-adjusted annual return of more than 15 percent. For stocks, the historical return is 7 percent. For real estate, it’s less than 1 percent.

Another study being released this weekend — by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen J. Rose of Georgetown — breaks down the college premium by occupations and shows that college has big benefits even in many fields where a degree is not crucial.
Construction workers, police officers, plumbers, retail salespeople and secretaries, among others, make significantly more with a degree than without one. Why? Education helps people do higher-skilled work, get jobs with better-paying companies or open their own businesses.

College costs in Ireland are still significantly low when compared with the U.S. and the decision is a no-brainer. Hope those completing their leaving certs this year are paying attention!

Would you blog/tweet for a free phone?

Apparently many students would say aye to the idea. The WSJ has an interesting piece about companies teaming up with universities to get students to blog/tweet about their products:
Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston's Emerson College with smartphones and unlimited service in exchange for students working gratis on the company's local Internet push.

Universities, in some cases, receive funding or proprietary consumer data from companies for their research. Students get experience they can display on their résumés, and add lively classes to the usual mix of lectures and written exams.

Companies interested in giving freebies to my students are welcome to contact me.

Times Higher Education rankings

The 2010-11 rankings have now been released. While this version is a huge improvement over previous efforts, some results look rather suspect. How on earth can Imperial rank higher than Yale, Penn, Michigan, Columbia and Chicago? Or UCL over Duke, Northwestern and NYU? Bristol over UVa, U of A, and GWU?

I suspect that many UK universities will fall lower if the methodology is improved.

NUIM President leaving

As the BBC reported over the weekend, Prof. John Hughes, our President is leaving to become vice-chancellor of Bangor University in Wales:
Prof Hughes has been president of National University of Ireland (NUI) Maynooth since 2004, during which time, Bangor University said, he transformed its fortunes.

He raised its ranking from 10th to fourth in Ireland, tripling research income to 34m euros per year, and earning Maynooth the accolade of Sunday Times University of the Year in Ireland in 2008.

This is a coup for Bangor and a huge blow for us. John is a visionary leader with serious academic chops and I've enjoyed every interaction I've had with him. Most importantly, he is a blue-skies thinker and innovator. They are very fortunate to get him and I am sure that he will elevate Bangor's reputation even in these challenging times.

Announcement: Undergraduate Awards

The Undergraduate Awards of Ireland and Northern Ireland is now open for submissions for 2010.

First round deadline, March 12th, is approaching fast!

Cambridge to Issue Bonds to Raise Funds

Via Elizabeth Pfeuti of WSJ, comes news that Cambridge is planning to issue bonds to finance infrastructure projects. The offering is tiny - $200-300 million. This is probably a first for the UK, but is commonplace in the US, where university bond offerings are in billions of dollars.
The 'other place' is doing the right thing, although there are doubts about timing because of the glut of university paper on the market as a result of the debilitating knock that US university endowments have taken in recent years.
Oxford's finances are also not where they need to be to compete with US universities. Following Cambridge (it hurts to say this) might be the way forward.

Oxbridge Tutorials

The Telegraph's recent report (HT: Steve Hedley) about new funding cuts potentially ending Oxford's unique tutorial system is more bad news for the UK's higher education system. The tutorial system (which is extremely resource intensive) has been limping along for some time now and this may be the final nail in the coffin. The attractiveness of the UK as a higher education destination for foreign students is built substantially on the reputational gloss conferred by Oxbridge. Successive governments have done everything possible to destroy the uniqueness of these two crown jewels in the name of social justice. Brown & Co. might succeed in bleeding Oxford in the short term, but the dreaming spires will endure as they have for hundreds of years.

Take a Bow, Irish Researchers

I'm surprised that the Irish blogosphere has been silent about a report in the Independent about Ireland ranking "eighth in terms of the impact of research publication, ahead of China, Singapore and Australia." The article was based on a report commissioned by the Higher Education Authority comparing research in Ireland against 20 major countries (Canada is the significant omission). Good news deserves to be celebrated, particularly in these gloomy times. Scholars deserve a pat on the back for the hard work, but the study shows that much needs to be done across the spectrum if Ireland has to be competitive internationally.

Interesting bits from the HEA report are highlighted in blue:

Ireland typically takes a 0.3-0.4% share of world papers.  In biological sciences, where growth is strong, its share is higher (around 0.5%) and much higher in agriculture (0.6%) and agricultural biotechnology (1.5%). It also does well in computer science and electronic engineering...

It is important to note that the study only looks at journals in the Web of Science. This is a limited resource in the social sciences, particularly in fields like law where major journals are not included in that database. Accordingly, the study's conclusions may be more salient in some subject areas than in others because it is under-inclusive of relevant research outlets.

Ireland’s share of world citations is greater than its share of world papers (0.49% recently, 0.64% in 2007) so its output is cited more than average. Consequently, Ireland’s citation impact is good and improving. Whereas it ranks 18th by volume, it ranks 8th on citation impact overtaking Australia and Finland.

This is to be celebrated. Clearly, we are writing less junk than some of the other countries studied.

The research base is dominated by UCD (now similar in volume to QUB), TCD and UCC. Citation impact has increased for many HEIs. TCD has been a consistent leader, but UCD has improved by a greater margin, overtaking QUB, while RCSI and DIAS have exceptional profiles.

No surprises here, this just confirms what most people know already.

Ireland has more uncited papers than leading research economies but the modal cited group is above world average. It also has a good balance of excellence with 6.2% of papers cited more than four times as often as world average, which compares with 6.1% for the UK.

Total Research Output: 1998-2007

The level of national inter-institutional collaboration is relatively small. Collaboration between Ireland and Northern Ireland is very low, with QUB linking to around just 1% of output for UCD and about 2% of output for TCD.

The lack of intra-Ireland collaboration is not terribly surprising. However, given the small size of the research community, collaboration has to be seen as smart strategy rather than as hortative hope.

There has been substantial growth in the number of Irish authored social science papers over
the last ten years. From a very low base in 1998 (only 67 papers, or 0.27% of total world
output) Ireland produced 244 papers, or 0.7% of world output, in 2007. Within Ireland, social
science output has gone from being the lowest of the main research areas to the strongest in
terms of volume growth.

This is still small change. There is a clear gap in terms of where the field needs to be both qualitatively and quantitatively.

Ireland shows strong growth (73% increase in 2007 compared with the average 2002-06) in
terms of business research publications. This headline figure needs to be interpreted carefully
however, in the context of firstly a very low baseline (67 papers in 1998; 71 average 2002-06),
and secondly a possibly aberrant figure for 2007.

Business research is dominated by exceptional activity and a distinctive publishing and citation
culture in the USA. Irish economics and business research improved in terms of rates of
citation in the period 2005 – 2007. Overall performance is weak relative to the USA-centric
world average. Publications for all years over the period 1998 – 2007 (with the exception of
2006) achieved average citation rates which were lower than world average. Ireland’s ranking
within the comparator group has moved up to 8th, but this position reflects other poor
performances relative to world average by a number of comparator nations rather than any
great strength in Irish research.


The jump in 2007 is perplexing. Perhaps there is a simple explanation? In any event, given the huge disparity in business research between the US and the rest of the world, the data suggests an opportunity for Ireland to compete for best of the rest.

Indexed journal articles in social science research are dominated by the USA and UK, where
large and active communities extensively co-cite and hence elevate the world average.
Comparative citation rates for Irish social science research are well below that world average,
but so are average citation rates for other members of the comparator group. Even so
Ireland’s ranking at 12th out of the 19 nations is poor, ahead only of Australia and the Asian
nations.

I am not certain about what is meant by co-cite, or why this is implied to be a problem. It is true that the US and UK dominate research in this area, and for good reason. Resource differences offer a partial explanation and one can expect changes as social science research in emerging economies acquires greater scale and becomes more sophisticated.

Social Science Research at Irish Universities:

As the report notes, Irish academics in the social sciences need to take note of the shift in paradigm privileging journals over monographs. UCC and NUIM have declined during the study period, and the growth is modest at other universities despite the low baseline numbers. This must be an area of concern for the whole sector.

This chart shows citation impact across all fields:

Impact is an index of citations per paper compared with world averages. UCC, Limerick, DIT and Ulster have reason for concern.

This chart shows citation impact for social sciences:

The report summarizes the state of affairs in the social sciences succinctly: "The overall impression is that research across the system is not yet strong in global comparisons." Ouch.