CAO and the like

There has been a lot of heat around this summer, not climatically-at least here-but in the media regarding points, skills acquisition, language, appropriate degrees etc.. Long used to there been a proliferation of expertise regarding such matters in my own field of criminal justice, I am somewhat bemused  to hear Morning Ireland journalists and others now quite adept at conversations regarding the merits of project maths, and well informed about the niceties of CAO points calculation.

What characterises this discourse is the following: The economic and strategic import of skills in certain areas of endeavour is taken as a given, and these areas are fairly narrowly- not to say traditionally defined. Essentially they are regarded as those of science and maths, with some role for modern languages- the latter of course minus the literature. It behoves us to reflect on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Thomas Kuhn, that scientific endeavour is not so stratified, and that intellectual and imaginative bounce is not the preserve of any one discipline, no more than a facility in a foreign language will improve skills of communication without something more being imbued.

All the talk nationally about changed approaches to admission to Universities, and broad based first year or undergraduate degrees, seems to me to miss the point that students already- as always- vote with their feet to study and stay with what they like; that interdisciplinarity still requires one is imbued with a discipline to start (which is why there is much of the good work there done at postgraduate level); and that making options available to students to study interesting combinations across many faculties, can happen and does happen, within current offerings. Some of the best students I have known come from degree courses which are joint –as in shared by two disciplines- as they welcome the opportunity to ‘work with both sides of their brain’ as they put it. Some of the most disillusioned I have met, are those who have chosen courses because they thought them pragmatic–as in they would get a job -only to discover on graduating four years later that the world had changed. Where there is an opportunity for some of our young people to train vocationally, it may well be at postgraduate taught masters level (which is why our government withdrawal of funding is so shortsighted) and there are many rich offerings in that space. What must be preserved however is the intellectual freedom for undergraduates to range far and wide, whether within or outside their disciplines, in the undergraduate years. This must not be mistaken for repackaging of degrees populated with offerings from different areas or sectors, or become solely a product of same. It must be recognised and celebrated that this is also a matter of approach to scholarship very much found within the disciplines, not exclusively held by just some. When one looks at the lives that our graduates lead, and the major roles they hold: humanities graduates in finance and science graduate in development, their lived lives belie the notion that disciplines are either narrow or confined in their relevance or remit.

Higher education landscape –a crib sheet!

A recent report in the Guardian mentioned how philosopher AC Grayling’s New College of the Humanities due to open in (Bloomsbury) London in September, which is focussed exclusively on teaching degrees in the Humanities, will be dominated by students from private schools with just one in five offers being made to state school pupils. The fee of £18,000 a year was according to Grayling reflective of the cost of providing a ‘very high –quality, intensive education’.

Our funders may not share Grayling’s view that high quality intensive education in the humanities costs, and that may not reflect our bottom line budget, but it is a useful reflection on a trend in institutions (elsewhere), their identity and location and cost. As we are drawing closer to approaching the July deadline when the HEA expects our Institution along with the other HEIs to have submitted to them, our mission as a University, with our strategic intentions as to where we propose to position ourselves in the Irish higher education system, it might be useful to muse on these matters a little. According to a letter sent to Presidents by Tom Boland, the HEA CEO, (on the HEA website), submissions need to cover the institution’s distinctive mission, its preferred institutional type and structure, having regard to current strengths, its institutional alliances and its involvement in regional clusters.-  The ‘current strengths’ piece reminds us that this is a reality check, and should be reflective to some degree of what we are currently composed: in what disciplines and areas our students and staff mainly lie.

A recent (first) visit to DCU campus for a meeting of the new Irish Research Council (IRC- logo forthcoming!) served to highlight for me how institutions sometimes feel different, in a way which is not simply a product of building age or design. It has more to do perhaps with the ethos or focus of the place which can be evident in imponderable ways, but ensures that, although in broad measure all higher education institutions within the HEA remit are places committed to similar ideals and aims, and all engage in the academic and educational endeavour, the ‘mix’ or feel of each is different-not inferior or superior-just not the same. That difference, however elusive, might be exactly what defines us-but we may not realise it. It may also be what our students and graduates best and most easily identify-and remember. It may be why they choose our institution over others, and may determine why and if they stay there. Academic staff, (although of course motivated by the realities of employment opportunities), also often move between institutions of different types for broadly similar reasons.

So if you are a student or staff member what does UCC offer-or what might you perceive as a visiting academic in our institution? Easiest to work from the outside in on this:

UCC has a beautiful visually and aesthetically pleasing campus with a commitment to the visual arts and architecture evident in the sculptures in the President’s  garden as well as the Glucksman.

It is a substantial campus in scope giving a sense of the breath and range of the disciplines within –what is often termed a comprehensive University. It has itself a history and considerable heritage (archives etc.), and a commitment to the historic as well as the modern. Nonetheless although located in the heart of the city-it is moving (unconsciously perhaps!) to the western edge more recently-and so in danger perhaps of becoming ‘suburban’. (Memo to ourselves: watch this as UCC has always been a city campus and an important part of the (second) city.)

It has a campus full of students, not in an overcrowded way, but in a visible sense as their presence around the grounds shows it to be a fun place for sport, games and cultural and social engagement. It is also an environment where students concentrate on knowledge, and are removed of other some concerns. It is generally safe, for instance, and there are no considerations such as a strict dress code etc-(in that sense we are like Google!) as the priority is time (uncrowded) and effort given over to thinking and reflecting and growing intellectually. This facilitates students at many levels but prioritises undergraduate and postgraduate up to doctoral and post doctoral level.

It is an intellectual and elite institution, focussed on research for knowledge. The campus is an environment which houses and values a range of disciplinary experts (our academic staff) who are hired, valued and indeed attracted in, in order to make UCC a site of the deepest possible engagement with intellectual argument and scientific discovery, thereby ensuring nationally Ireland is equipped to engage in dialogue and participate on a world basis in research for knowledge.

Clustering or connecting with the positions of other institutions regionally, is a more nebulous one. I can say that in my own discipline I have seen that it can be a destination of choice for many graduates, who on completion of studies elsewhere -e.g. WIT- want a University experience. For them it may perhaps offer a more theoretical component, complementary to courses where the emphasis elsewhere is otherwise. In that sense it offers either a wider scope, or range, or options to a higher level in many subject areas, which are pursued from a different (equally valid) perspective elsewhere. In itself this reflects the fact that institutionally, University College Cork houses, in equal measure, research and teaching which embraces applied, wholly theoretical, and blue skies thinking, as well as valuing thinking for no purpose at all.

How is that for a start?

Here’s the thing

I had occasion recently to mention to some colleagues ‘the new face of academia’. I’m not sure they knew what I meant (even less so that I did). Nonetheless here are a few thoughts on our changing nature, apposite I would suggest as so many of our valued colleagues will shortly depart from a life of public service in the educational sector before their time-and without the fanfare or acknowledgment which they might deserve.

Increasingly academics as I’ve mentioned previously are disappearing as a numerically majority force on our campuses. In their place there are now either new or an increasing number of:

Researchers (now also research professors-begging the question what do the rest do)??

Post docs as increasingly no entrance level posts as academics appear

Part timers

Specialist administrators- these for all manner of additional academic services and initiatives from recruitment to promotion of programmes to ICT.

How then is academia different from previously? Has the lot of the academic changed?

When I started as an academic I like others lectured and taught as I was told and enjoyed it, but was also expected to do-and did-much more. That ‘more’ involved things like promoting our programmes to schools persuading them of the value of a University education (by travelling on a (rickety) bus to far flung places like Youghal); journeying across Europe to meet French and German colleagues & persuade them to take our students; later travelling further afield to the USA to do the same. This was additional to teaching at night and day; publishing; innovating where possible or desirable in the curriculum; and meeting my students. The latter ranged from supervising postgraduates, to mentoring first years and others; while in between chatting to colleagues and performing the usual quasi admin academic tasks like student discipline; exam appeals ; plagerism; as well as speaking at student conferences and events on campus frequently at week-ends. Those ‘additional’ items, apart from the strict delivery of lectures and exams, are part of the fabric of campus life as much as the excitement and shared pleasure of lectures and seminars with students who share one’s own peculiar interests. Some amongst them stick out:-a discipline issue involved a good looking but slightly scary Russian boxer with lots of funds; a tale of a student involving brothels and fires which would turn your hair; a similar episode involving a lost passport; and a charming pre Philosophical society dinner with Clement Freud to which he had brought a very old port for the students to taste (I assisted) which enlivened the subsequent debate on pornography no end.

These kinds of events would be recognised by all academics and those now retiring would have many such tales. But if I talk of the changing face of academia, has that in any way changed? I think it helps answer that question if we look at what academics are now meant to be doing in the sense of what offers reward (at least theoretically) through the promotion scheme in our Institutions. In these one might find amongst the characteristics of the ‘ideal’ (new) academic amongst which would be the following:

Writing research and grant proposals; watching citation indices; creating networks for grants; gathering peer esteem indicators; producing scholarly articles (in peer reviewed journals only) and perhaps monographs. All of this being effected at some speed.

There is visibly less of -or at least less emphasis upon- the importance or centrality of the ‘older’ academics lot of teaching in often overcrowded lecture halls filled with sometimes less than motivated students (themselves obsessing with crafting a CV with ‘suitable’ internships and opportunities and impressive referees amongst which should number the ‘new’ type academic). All of this of necessity causing somewhat ‘slower’ production of research-(but before the pundits reach for the red pen here, think of the ‘slow food movement’ as a parallel).

Nowadays some academics may not do that much teaching in that the said research grants may provide for ‘buy out’ of their teaching; so that they like the above-mentioned researchers engage full time in research. Hence students may not meet these newer academics and researchers in the course of their degrees. The recruitment rounds will not find them visible either to attract students onto the campus, as these are hived off to specialist recruiters, agents and non academics. Yet the loss of the excitement of the communication of the story by the crafter of the postgraduate programme is the loss of a powerful recruitment tool. The student does not get the taste or feel of what a lecture from this person might be like (whether terrible or great).  Meanwhile on campus the student experience for the undergraduate, who is busy polishing their CV, engaging in internships and placements; acquiring transferable skills and documenting how they are engaged in the (always ‘cutting edge!!’) research of their professors in a campus with facilities of accommodation (self catering) and broadband access on a par with anywhere, could possibly be anywhere else.  What happens to the feel of college life: to drinking coffee, thinking subversive thoughts, exchanging views over pints with a lecturer in the old college bar after a student debate; being part of an organisation on campus that does something vaguely shady (I will go no further than to point out that the occasional occupation of college offices; showing of the banned films Patriot Game or Life of Brian and sale of prophylactics in the Kampus Kitchen sufficed in my day). That stuff may now only be found on our campuses in the brief to the ‘marketers and branders’ (new people also on our shore) and may surface solely in vignettes about college life to recruit postgrads.

So where the CAO entrant might ask is the excitement/the beef? Why should they come to us rather than the Technological University of Munster? If the only difference lies in the title, and we take comfort in the assurance that Minister Quinn has stated ITs must try harder to be Universities, that may cause us to rest on our laurels-Yet of all people we should know that aspiration eventually equals grasp, at least on the part of some. If for example we take comfort in the fact that the staff of the ‘technological University’ do not in sufficient numbers have PhDs, they may yet garner the necessary quotient of PhDs holders amongst their staff as indeed we –and other venerable Institutions- did previously. -One of the most impressive exponents in my own field of interest for instance was based in Oxford and proudly known as Mr Peter Carter MA.

If it is that extra ‘zing’ the ‘je ne sais quoi’ that made and will still save Universities, we need to find and safeguard it at a time of disappearing colleagues and emerging competing collegial institutions. To be, and by being different, we need to focus on it-before it also disappears out the door....

Happy St Bridget’s day and best wishes to all our departing colleagues!