Snip!
The Report of Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes (‘An Bord Snip Nua’) has now been published, and there is quite a lot in it of relevance to higher education. I shall be looking at it this afternoon, and will post my comments on it overnight. Of course there is also much in it of relevance to other parts of the public sector.
More later today.
Explore posts in the same categories: economy, politicsTags: An Bord Snip Nua, Report of Special Group on Public Service Numbers and Expenditure Programmes
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University Blog 
July 16, 2009 at 3:18 pm
Your link is to volume 1, but the details are spelled out in volume 2. http://bit.ly/gM1Vi
The higher education section: pages 63-71
July 16, 2009 at 3:27 pm
Thank you, Iain – yes.
July 16, 2009 at 4:59 pm
This must be a concern….
….Further, the Group is of the view that the allocation to the research councils to increase Ph.D. outputs should be reduced because of the uncertainty about the absorptive capacity of industry to employ fourth level graduates and the propensity of Ph.D. graduates to emigrate.
The fifth cycle of the PRTLI scheme is due to run over the period 2010 to 2014. This scheme has been in operation since 1998 and there is insufficient evidence of the positive economic impact of the programme to date. Subject to any contractual commitments, this cycle should be cancelled. This will lead to savings in future years as spending on earlier cycles of PRTLI winds down without any new funding requirements arising in their place. The cancellation should also have implications for SFI funding given that SFI researchers are housed in PRTLI funded infrastructure.
July 16, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Very quiet on here – the reports seem to have struck everyone dumb. A lot to get one’s head around, and little of it good. Pretty horrific for the people in Tipp Inst and DIT, and the research office staff at UCD and TCD must have seriously annoyed someone! PRTLI and SIF dead in the water, and the HEA to be abolished. Something for us all to think about over the rest of the summer.
The most interesting and worrying aspect of the report is the barely concealed hostility to academic research and innovation. The group obviously don’t buy the ‘smart economy’ rhetoric. Indeed they don’t appear to aspire to any type of future for Irish society at all – this is purely an accountancy exercise, devoid of any hope or imagination. Is this what we have all worked for the last decade for? Its a sad indictment of the current government that this is where we have ended up.
July 16, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I absolutely agree with your assessment, Perry. Blog posts on this just coming up.