Assessments and examinations at risk

As governments in a number of countries try to square the circle of rising higher education participation rates and budget (and therefore faculty) cuts, one thing in particular should be borne in mind: the risk to the quality of exam and assignment correction. Only academics can really know the burden that descends on them at [...]

Is the party over?

The latest opinion poll figures in Ireland suggest that independent candidates in the forthcoming general election may do very well: they are currently scoring 15 per cent, only one percentage point lower than Fianna Fáil. If this kind of support is maintained on the actual polling day it could, at least in theory, produce a [...]

Measuring influence in today’s world

Maybe you have heard of Justin Bieber, maybe you haven’t. So here’s a very short biography. He is nearly 17 years old. He is a singer. He has released one well-received album. He has a Twitter account with nearly 7 million followers. And according to some noise published earlier this month, he is more influential [...]

The return of ‘industrial action’?

My first academic job back in the 1980s was that of lecturer in industrial relations in Trinity College Dublin. This came just after Britain’s ‘winter of discontent’ that fatally undermined Jim Callaghan’s term as British Prime Minister, and just before the British miners’ strike, which probably more than anything else contributed to the erosion of [...]

Academic hierarchy

About a year ago I was at a dinner in another Irish university and sat next to a very distinguished senior academic from that institution. The conversation was lively and interesting, and amongst other things we talked about the changing circumstances of academic lives and careers. My friend expressed the view that one of the [...]

A web of confusion

As I have noted previously, these days the main ‘shop window’ in which a university presents its programmes, facilities and services to a wider world is its worldwide web homepage. Anyone wanting to make contact with it is likely to look there first, and therefore it is very important that the institution presents itself well. [...]

Taking ‘banter’ seriously

It’s not easy to take Katie Hopkins – really a person just famous for being famous – seriously, and so probably one shouldn’t bother too much with anything she says. For those who are not familiar with her, she was a contestant on the BBC’s show The Apprentice in 2007, and before and after that [...]

How should the academic community respond to critical public opinion?

Here is a comment from the United States about how the wider public views the academic profession: ‘”Across the country, public education is under siege,” Lisa Vollendorf, chair of the Romance, German and Russian languages and literatures department and of the academic senate at California State University at Long Beach, said in an e-mail, summing [...]

Elections and the search for a political brand

Like many people in Ireland, I spent yesterday evening observing the outcome of the Fianna Fáil leadership election and watching the new leader, Micheál Martin, give his first press conference. The obvious question to ask at this point is whether his arrival in this position will make a difference to his party’s fortunes. Of course [...]

A woman’s place is in parliament

As Irish readers of this blog will perhaps know, over the past 24 hours or so there has been a lot of comment on the internet, particularly on Twitter, about the performance of the Labour Party’s spokesperson on Finance, Joan Burton, on a late night television programme. The programme was maybe 10 minutes into its [...]