Showing posts with label Irish universities. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Irish universities. Show all posts

Thursday, May 5, 2016

5/5/16: THE 2016 Rankings of Irish Universities in one chart


Updated Times Higher Education rankings for top 5 Irish Universities for 2011-2016:


No Irish Uni in top 100 for the 5th year running. Two Irish Unis in top 101-200, for the 5th year running and no new additions to that club.

No comment, but UK folks are concerned about their performance:  http://www.bbc.com/news/education-36203613.

Wednesday, December 16, 2015

16/12/15: Only 2/5 Global Ranking Methodologies Show an Irish Uni in Top 100


Universities rankings are a hazardous undertaking. Too many moving metrics, too many subjective inputs, too many egos fighting each other and too many euros and dollars and rupees and pounds etc at stake from funding sources. So one really should take them with a grain of salt and in comparatives look at a number of rankings across the board.

So here's a set of simple facts:


US NWR rankings:
QS rankings:


Wikipedia rankings:

Note: although QS and Wikipedia rankings for Trinity are relatively close, two methodologies are quite different. In terms of perceived robustness, ARWU and THE, are seen as top quality rankings, with QS and USNWR methodologies being usually seen as 'intermediate' quality and Wikipedia rankings being, err... a bit off-the-wall. 

Still, net effect is: 3/5 global universities rankings give Ireland zero places in top 100. No matter how you spin this, it ain't great...

Thursday, November 5, 2015

5/11/15: Times Higher Education Rankings of Irish Universities: 2016


Times Higher Education rankings of universities are out and the bad news is that Irish universities are doing poorly as a group and more poorly in 2016 rankings than in 2015.

Here is a snapshot of country’s ranked institutions:




And here is the disaster unfolding over time:



So over the last two years of the ‘recovery’: three out of top-ranked 5 Irish universities saw their rankings tank, one saw the ranking static, one saw rankings improve in 2014-2015 table before somewhat deteriorating in 2015-206 table. Three Irish universities are now in the ‘Third Tier’ of global performance, two are in the ‘Second Tier’ and none are in the ‘World Class” group.

Meanwhile, of course, Irish third level education and academic research sustained second largest (in % terms) funding cuts since the start of the Global Financial Crisis amongst all OECD economies.

That is not to say that Irish Universities are doing everything possible to improve their performance. No, sir, we are still stuck in the old mode of past promotions, rewards, hiring and assessment practices. And we are still failing to develop non-tenured faculty and adjunct faculty engagement with rankle activities, including… err… academic research. 


Any surprises, thus? 

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

7/10/15: Of Island of Scholars...


A very interesting set of interactive charts showing the impact of the crisis on third level funding and student numbers across various European states: http://eua.be/activities-services/projects/eua-online-tools/public-funding-observatory-tool.aspx.

One shocking conclusion: whilst Ireland experienced a robust increase in the number of students during the crisis, Irish public funding for universities fell at a second highest rate in the EU (after Greece). You can see where these comparatives put us in contrast to, say, Iceland.

Saturday, August 15, 2015

15/8/15: Irish Universities: None in Top 100, One in Top 200 & Top 300


Academic Ranking of World Universities 2015 are out (see details here: http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2015.html) and Ireland is not exactly shining.

Only 3 Irish Universities are ranked in top 500:

TCD managed to post flat performance on 2014, reaching its highest Institutional rank since 2003. Which is the best news we had.


Meanwhile, UCD ranking fell pretty substantially, with university ranked in 201-300 place in 2014 now ranked in 301-400 place:


UCC posted second consecutive year of declines in 2015, although it stayed within the 401-500 ranking group.

I will be blogging on data coming out of the survey more later this month, but for now, top line conclusion is: things are not getting better in top Irish Unis relative performance.

Time for more self-congratulatory government talk, promises and awards… and let's get few more Unis designated, just because stretching already scarce resources thin is, obviously, the best way to achieve greatness...

Thursday, August 21, 2014

21/8/2014: Shanghai Academic Rankings 2014: Ireland


Earlier this week, I promised to update historical track record of Irish Universities performance in Shanghai Academic Ranking of World Universities. The latest (2014) results are here: http://www.shanghairanking.com/ARWU2014.html

Summary of all Irish Universities rankings by 'neighbourhood':

Top-ranked TCD:

Second best-ranked UCD:

Third best-ranked UCC:

Historical evolution of Irish rankings:

Draw your own conclusions...

Saturday, May 10, 2014

10/5/2014: Irish Unis: Excellence in Areas of State Neglect...

No comment needed. Headline says it all:


As @brianmlucey said:


Oh, and all top departments are in the Universities that are not designated as greenfield 'centres of excellence' during the Celtic Tiger and were not in receipt of massive specially-designated 'convergence' infrastructure funding from the National Development Plans.

Sunday, January 5, 2014

5/1/2014: An interesting case study in one University transformation


An interesting article in the Slate about the use of new teaching platforms and strategies to increase student graduation rates for part-time students and boost financial position at one US university:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/01/southern_new_hampshire_university_how_paul_leblanc_s_tiny_school_has_become.html#!

It is worth (in light of acrimonious nature of debate about academic and teaching models in Ireland) to note that I do not suggest this is a template for transforming or reforming the entire Irish system of higher education.

When you cut through the opening lines, you get the core point of the change:

"“The business models implicit in higher-ed are broken,” he says. “Public institutions will not see increasing state funding and private colleges will not see ever-rising tuition.”

His solution was to tackle what colleges were doing poorly: graduating students. Half the students who enroll in post-secondary education never get a degree but still accumulate debt. The low completion rate can be blamed partly on the fact that college is still designed for 18-year-olds who are signing up for an immersive, four-year experience replete with football games and beer-drinking. But those traditional students make up only 20 percent of the post-secondary population. The vast majority are working adults, many with families, whose lives rarely align with an academic timetable.

“College is designed in every way for that 20 percent—cost, time, scheduling, everything,” says LeBlanc. He set out to create an institution for the other 80 percent, one that was flexible and offered a seamless online experience."

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

11/12/2013: Irish Patenting Activity: November 2013

Reading Pictet's latest monthly, covering the topic of Swiss competitiveness... it is awesome - with interviews from academics, watchmakers, artists, museums directors, company that makes engines for Mars rovers, biotech giant, and so on. And it reminded me to update the data set on Irish patenting activity from NewMorningIP for November.

Here are the results:


Monthly data shows that November 2013 patenting activity in Ireland fell to its third lowest level since the records maintained by NewMorningIP started in August 2012. At 183 patents filed, November 2013 is down on 197 a year ago. So far, Q4 2013 results are running at the lowest level for all quarterly results.

It is worth noting that the data can be throwing seasonal variation. We can't tell due to short nature of series.

Not spectacular numbers at any rate. Big overseas inventions fall-off to 100 in November, the third lowest month on record. Irish inventions are down also.

On annual basis, 2013 is shaping up to post around 2,600 patents, up on 2012. All increases are due to increased overseas patents activity, with Irish patents falling. We shall see how December plays out, however.

Thursday, December 5, 2013

5/12/2013: Irish Education: In Need of Serious Reforms


This is an unedited version of my column in October-November issue of the Village Magazine.


Over the last two decades, Irish economic growth has been primarily driven by a series of financial and investment bubbles. Each one was fuelled by the ad hoc nature of our policymakers’ responses to shifts in global economic trends and their penchant for fetishizing foreign policies fads.

In the mid-1990s, on foot of the US-led dot.com industry explosion, Ireland became the focal point of the investment bubble that saw the state policies and funds inflating the already out-of-touch valuations of the companies. Promising to plug our economy into the Internet of Things, entities from Baltimore Technologies to MediaLab Europe, and everyone in-between, were hovering public and private funds in a race to leapfrog this sleepy island into the 21st century.

In the 2001, at the onset of dot.com hangover, government investment became the new rage. Social Partners climbed over each other to get funding for awe-inspiring schemes usually described as Global Centres for Excellence. This bubble too was based on fads that came to Ireland from abroad, namely from Brussels. To continue fund our fetishes for spending cash we built bungalows at an ever-increasing pace. From 2001 on, Irish economy became an economy built on breezeblocks.

With the bust and the ensuing Great Recession, one could have hoped for a mature review of the policies past and a shift away from our dreamt up grandiose plans. Yet, to-date, the entire response of the two successive Governments to the bust was to feed our hopium addiction. Budget 2009 announcements made amidst the ongoing implosion of the domestic economy promoted aggressively the concept of the Knowledge Economy as our salvation. Truth be told, the Innovation Island is a Potemkin Village.


To see this, one needs to look no further than at our ability to create the base on which a knowledge-intensive economy is built: the human capital.

In my recent speech at TEDx Dublin, I offered a systemic template for assessing any economy’s human capital potential. That system is called C.A.R.E. as it assesses how well a country can Create, Attract, Retain and Enable its workforce’s technical and social skills, talents, creativity, capacity to innovate, engage in entrepreneurship, willingness and ability to take risks. In the nutshell C.A.R.E. is about systems that should put human beings and their abilities at the centre of our society and economy.

Across the entire spectrum of C.A.R.E. systems, education plays a pivotal role. And it is exactly here that many of our policy gaps become painfully apparent.

Firstly, our education system does not enable seamlessly continuous and high quality life-long cycle of learning and training. Secondly, our education system is incapable of sustaining development of such vital aspects of human capital as creativity, ability to manage risks, and engage in ongoing innovation across various domains of knowledge and skills. Thirdly, our education system is inherently elitist. This prevents it from ever becoming a truly functional creator and enabler of human capital economy. With elitism comes the death of innovation and creativity. Fourthly, our education system is riddled with inefficiencies, protectionism and skewed incentives, which lead to sub-standard educational and research outcomes.


Let’s take some of these claims in detail, omitting many considerations for the lack of space.

Since the Finance Act 2004, Irish governments have been working on expanding indigenous R&D activities. Over the last ten years, billions of euros were poured into the tax credits and investment supports. Billions more went to fund higher education institutions’ efforts to sustain research and innovation.

While some third level institutions – namely the top four or five universities – have produced tangible results in driving research output up, the rest remained far behind. Even tope universities have shown weak performance.

The 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) lists only three universities for Ireland, with best performer, TCD ranked in 201-300th place in the world. UCD and UCC rank in 301-400th places. On that, Ireland’s presence in top 500 universities as ranked by ARWU runs dry.

QS rankings list eight Irish universities in top 600 in the world, with TCD ranked the highest in 61st place. Second-best, UCD ranks 139th. Only six Irish universities make it into world’s top 300. Back in 2009, we had two universities in top 100, and seven in top 300.

Absurd centralization of education and research policies, coupled with budgetary pressures, centralized and politicized research and teaching funding allocations have accelerate the rate of brain drain from top Irish academic institutions in recent years. This, in part, is the driver for poor ranking performance over the recent years. However, even in 2005-2007, with cash abundant, Irish universities performance was far from stellar.

INSERT TABLE HERE

Meanwhile, across the rest of the higher education sector, both teaching and research remained stuck somewhere in the antediluvian age.

Instead of development of modern, research-capable and skills-based adjunct and clinical faculties, majority of our degrees programmes continue to operate on the basis of full-time faculty teaching out of a textbook and into a pre-set, standardized exam. Furthermore, programmes are often staffed with faculty members who are neither research active, nor have any appreciable experience in applied work relating to their teaching.

While top universities around the world are aggressively moving to new teaching platforms and broadening their programmes by erasing the boundaries between various degrees, in Ireland we still treat a slide projector as a technological enabler. Web-based apps, audio-visual tools, data visualisation and other core tech supports are virtually unheard of in even top-ranked Irish universities.

In many university classrooms, students are more technologically enabled than their lecturers.

Absent deployment of modern strategies and technologies, Ireland embraced the three-year degree system. If anything, lack of proper progression in developing teaching skills and tools should have led to a lengthening of the degree programme to maintain fixed quality of the graduates. Instead we opted to trade down the learning curve in pursuit of higher put-through numbers.

All of this stands contrasted by the fact that in our flagship universities there are some individual teaching and research programmes which operate at a world-class level. Irish academia, it appears, can do excellence, just not across the whole system.


On the research side, things are not stacking up in favour of our education being the enabler of Knowledge Ireland either. New Morning IP, the intellectual capital consultancy firm, publishes regular data on patenting activity by indigenous Irish companies, foreign inventors and Irish academic institutions.

Over the last 12 months, 2,580 patents were filed in Ireland by all types of academic institutions and private sector firms. Irish academic institutions accounted for only 9.1% of these filings. Irish private sector firms are considered to be relative underperformers in terms of R&D output compared to their counterparts across the OECD. Yet, of all patent filings, these firms account for almost four times more patents than all Ireland-based academic institutions taken together.

INSERT CHART

Not surprisingly, the European Patent Office data for 2012 put Ireland in 26th place in terms of total number of patent applications and in per-capita indigenous innovation terms, right between such powerhouses of the ‘knowledge economy’ like New Zealand and Cyprus.

The above data correlates with the poor performance by the country academic institutions in attracting private sector research funding. In August, a study by the Times Higher Education, ranked Ireland at the bottom of global league table in terms of private sector funding per academic researcher. Lower rankings for Ireland can be in part explained by poor innovation uptake by many domestic enterprises. However, these rankings also show that our system of higher education is inefficient in producing market-relevant research. Given the importance of such research to teaching and training future cohorts of human capital-rich workers, this is not a good thing.


Irish system of higher education requires serious and immediate reforms.

At the top, we need more flexible, more responsive public policy formation capable of supporting knowledge-intensive, skills-rich and rapidly evolving education. Fields of research and teaching, such as biotech, stem cells research, content-based ICT, remote medicine, human interface technology, customizable design and development technologies and so on all require a mix of skills we currently struggle to provide. Outside these, the world of business and the overall socio-economic make up is changing rapidly. In previous decades, generic management degrees offered a good starting point for on-the-job-learning. Today we need both specialist knowledge and general human capital as the basis for entering management areas of work. In the past, specialism was the differentiator into growth areas in the economy. Today, encyclopedism and ability to cross boundaries of defined degrees is increasingly a valued skill.

Policy level changes require introducing accountability and direct incentives into education system. Introduction of university-set fees are the starting point for this. Yet, even more institutional autonomy will be required to move to a system of higher education where both success and failure are reflected in actual outcomes. Successful institutions should be incentivised to thrive. Poorly functioning ones should be forced to shut down or be acquired by successful ones. Public funding should follow quality of teaching and research, not political considerations of which constituency is next in line for grants.

We must end political remit over the system of academic research and higher education. The best way to do so is by allowing more competition, imposing tighter quality controls and allowing institutions more freedom to price their offers reflective of both demand for and supply of quality.




Tuesday, October 1, 2013

1/10/2013: Irish Patenting Activity Q3 2013


Data on patents and patent applications for Ireland was published today by New Morning IP. Here's their summary and couple of my comments:

"In summary for September 2013:

  • 192 published applications or patents issued to Irish applicants through USPTO, EPO and PCT.
  • Top three assignees: Zamtec, Accenture Global Services and Digital Optics
  • Academic institutions accounted for 14% of Irish invention published this month
  • 41% of publications were Irish-originating inventions"
Now, my look at the data:
  • There was an increase from previous levels for Irish academic institutions share of all patents filed to 13.0%. In Q4 2012 - Q2 2013 these ranged between 7.9% and 10.7%.
  • In Q3 2013 there were total of 84 Irish academic patents granted or applied for, against the total number of Irish inventions at 274 and overseas inventions at 371. 
  • Numbers of Irish inventions in total declined from 283 in Q2 2013 to 274 in Q3 2013 and now stand at the lowest level since full quarterly records begin (Q4 2012).
  • Number of all patents applied for or granted rose to 645 in Q3 2013 from 636 in Q2 2013. This represents the second lowest level of activity for the entire period since Q4 2012.
Charts:


Tuesday, April 30, 2013

30/4/2013: Why not in Ireland?..

Bloomberg has an excellent report on MIT pairing up with Russia's Skolkovo on research, education and commercialisation:

Key stats of interest: "There were 83 international branch campuses of U.S. universities as of March, not including partnerships such as MIT and Skolkovo’s, according to GlobalHigherEd.org, a website run by researchers at the State University of New York at Albany. That number has climbed from 10 in 1990, says Jason Lane, a SUNY Albany professor."

Ok, how many are in Ireland - the country with self-professed 'best educated workforce' and focused on building 'knowledge economy' self-dubbed 'innovation island', where we are so solemnly focused on exports (yes, education is exportable and it is a very high value-adding export too)? Answer: none.

There's an MIT campus in Portugal (hardly a shining light in 'knowledge economics'), there are educational 'hubs' all over the world (http://www.globalhighered.org/edhubs.php) and campuses all around the globe (http://www.globalhighered.org/branchcampuses.php). We even have 5 Irish institutions' campuses outside Ireland (though I seem to think UCD and TCD have either plans or actual campuses too, though they are not on the list), but when it comes to the closed shop market inside Ireland, there are no top-league unis from the US trading from the Emerald Isle into Europe and beyond.

Check out this map with locations and spot Ireland... http://www.globalhighered.org/maps.php

Why?.. We have lavish facilities for some ITs built around the country with little reason or rationale for their existence. Why not convert one of them into a JV with, say, Stanford? Princeton? Hell, University of Arkansas would be an improvement... Ah, I hear the Unis dons say, competition is good when it is regulated (aka, stacked in incumbents' favour), but in the age of economic crisis, why not get universities to start really competing for exports by giving them a worthy competitor here, targeting markets outside Ireland?

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Economics 07/03/2010: Consensus governance and failures to compete

Yesterday I tweeted about the case of attempted suppression of academic freedom in France (see here). An interesting paper, published in February 2010 by the Department of Economics, Tilburg University, titled Academic Faculty Governance and Recruitment Decisions sheds some light on the potential impact of the practices of suppressing dissent within our Universities.

In this paper, the authors analyzed the implications of the governance structure in academic faculties for their recruitment decisions. It turns out that “the value to individual members through social interaction within the faculty depends on the average status of their fellow members.” Which, of course, can be interpreted in common English as ‘cronyism’ or ‘collusion’. “In recruitment decisions, existing [faculty] members trade off the effect of entry on average status of the faculty against alternative uses of the recruitment budget if no entry takes place [i.e. getting their own hands on the pot of cash].” The study shows that “the best candidates join the best faculties but that they receive lower wages than some lower-ranking candidates”. The main policy implication raised by the study authors is that “consensus-based faculties, such as many in Europe, could improve the well-being of their members if they liberalized their internal decision making processes.”


Now, I’ve said on many occasions that our consensus-driven model of academic staffing would have never allowed people like Friedrich Hayek, or for that matter Milton Friedman, to be given tenure in Ireland. This is true, because hiring decisions in Irish universities – and I am speaking here from evidence relayed to me over the years in a number of actual cases – are based on social cliques (often organized around political and internal agendas, with loose affiliation with certain political ideologies). Anyone falling outside consensus, or threatening to ‘rock intellectual boat’ of dogmatic thinking and vested interests would never be allowed anywhere near a permanent post.


Of course this does not mean that everyone hired through the consensus process is not up to their jobs. Certainly such an assertion would be wrong. But it does mean that Irish academia is missing on critical thinking - a key ingredient in knowledge creation.

Ditto for our public sector. One example comes to mind.


Last year, the Central Bank was hiring a very senior research director. Amongst the applicants, there was a certain senior employee of the US Fed who holds, in addition to his Fed role, several senior academic positions worldwide in the area of Central Banking-related research. This person already held an exactly comparable position in the Fed for over a decade. He also has a list of central banking-related publications that would exceed those of any other academic in Ireland. This person was not even short-listed for the CB position, which subsequently went through an internal promotion to someone who has no publications on the subject, never had academic or practical experience in the area at the same level, but is a life-timer of the Irish public sector.


Consensus-based hiring at work, folks…

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Economics 17/12/2009: The latest on our Knowledge Economy

I will be blogging on the latest story from the 'emerging' economy of Ireland - emerging, allegedly from the recession - in a few hours time, so stay tuned. But for now, while cooking the dinner for my 3-year old let me bring to you the latest news from the 'Knowledge' economy Ireland.

Now, as a researcher I must admit, I know first hand that electronic editions of scientific journals are the sole source of published refereed research material I consult on a daily basis. Physical copies are too hard to use in modern research and archiving. And they arrive with a significant delay. And are environmentally less sustainable than e-versions.

Thus, electronic journals access is a must for any modern research in any field.

And here comes a bomb: Access to e-journals might be dropped by Irish Universities in 2010. Courtesy of the Science and Research strategy from the Government that just a week ago was science and research as the main strategy for our economic revival.

Here are the details from a leaked memorandum... I suppress personal names...

"Dear Fellows and Fellows Emeriti,

This note has been prepared by Dr F.B. of ... (Academic Department).

...alerting all interested parties including students that the Irish Government is about to burn the books. The universities of a knowledge based society must have access to electronic journals.

signed DMcC
Chairman of ... (academic body)


Dear All

Last night the Librarian ...briefed the Fellows on the current state of play with regard to the IREL/ on-line journal access service.

The position is not good and could have serious implications for staff and students at all Irish universities.

Briefly and from memory, the facts are as follows.

The service costs about €8-€8.5 million a year. Up to now, about €4.5m of this has been paid by SFI for science technology and medicine titles, but SFI have always said that their commitment was in the form of seed money and are now withdrawing their support. The HEA, which paid €4 million for humanities and social sciences titles are also stretched. But they may come up with some money. The worst case scenario may be €2 million, the best €3.5 million all from the HEA.

The IUA have been approached about bridging the gap, but either cannot or will not provide the ~€5+ million needed.

...In the short end of the medium term it will cripple research activity and undermine teaching in most areas throughout the universities...

Signed: FB"

Let me give you my quick 5-cents on this. E-journals access in Ireland is already relatively restricted compared to the US & UK universities. Cutting what we do have access to will simply mean plunging our science into the dark age of physical print, slow mail and distant archiving. In the age when Google and Microsoft are racing each other to put libraries on line, and IDA is promoting Ireland as a knowledge and innovation campus for global business, the savings of some €5-6 million at the cost of disconnecting Irish science and students from the rest of the world is just mad.

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Economics 08/10/2009: THE Rankings - World class to poor class

Times Higher Education 2009 world league table of Universities was published last week, confirm what all of us already know:
  • There is one world AAA class University in the country: Trinity College, that has risen from a respectable 49th place a year ago to 43th place in 2009 (peer review score=88 or relatively under performing for the peer group of top 50 universities, employer review score=96 good performance, staff/student score=72 average performance, citations/staff score=49 poor performance, international staff score=98 great performance, international students score=83 average performance, and overall score=80.1).
  • There is one world AA class university in the country: UCD, that has risen from 108th place in 2008 to 89th place this year (peer review score=72 - much poorer than TCD despite a major and sustained drive by UCD to improve research, employer review score=94 slightly lower than TCD but excellent performance overall, staff/student score=67 - a clear sign of funding shortfalls, citations/staff score=37 - very poor mark, suggesting little of influential research being performed, international staff score=95 very solid score, international students score=90 - an excellent score, but one wonders if it is a function of the various artificial exchange programmes sponsored by the EU, and overall score=69.7 - good score and good progress)
Not a single Irish University made it into Global 50 in the areas of:
  • Engineering & Information Technology;
  • Life Sciences & Biomedicine;
  • Natural Sciences;
  • Social Sciences; or
  • Arts & Humanities.
What can we learn from the above scores for TCD:
  1. Knowledge economy in TCD is happening through teaching and much less through research - our research scores still have ways to go to match our overall score.
  2. Knowledge economy is driven, at least in top universities, by international nature of the faculties, not by indigenous talent - as expected for a small open economy. So recent tightening in Green Cards and spouses employment for non-EU workers is a travesty that can cost us dearly in the areas of research.
  3. Despite having fewer resources (staff/student ratios being one sign of this), TCD and UCD pair is still managing to outshine our 'Gateways of Excellence' across the country - those heavily subsidised 'junior' Unis and ITs.
  4. There is absolutely no evidence that focusing on sciences or biomedicine, or life sciences or any of the rest of 'hard' science disciplines is yielding any real excellence in either TCD or UCD as neither institution has made it into top 50 rankings by a single discipline.
More on the results later... stay tuned