This is the third in a series of posts on Senator Seán Barrett‘s Private Members’ Bill, the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015, which was discussed last week in the Seanad (earlier posts are here and here). Senator Barrett is pictured left, with one of his research assistants, Ursula Ní Choill, to whom, with Dr Charles Larkin, his other research assistant, he paid very warm tribute at the start of the Second Stage debate. Section 6 of the Bill relates to university funding. This section dealt principally with rates, scales or ranges of remuneration; and a wide definition of remuneration was provided in section 2(1) of the Bill (indeed, this definition would have been wider than the references in section 25 of the Universities Act, 1997 (also here) or the definition provided in the Heads of a Universities (Amendment) Bill, 2012 (pdf)).…

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Senator Seán Barrett, in conjunction with Senator Feargal Quinn and Senator David Norris, introduced the Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015 as a Private Members’ Bill in the Seanad, and it was debated last week. It is an interesting and important Bill (full disclosure: I advised Seán in some of the drafting). It is relatively short, consisting of 10 sections and one Schedule, largely presented as a series of amendments to the Universities Act, 1997 (also here). But it is ambitious (see the full text here (pdf)). And had it prospered, it would have enacted some very important ideas and policies which would have put the development of Irish universities on a sound footing for quite some time to come. In this post, and the next three, I want to look at some of the issues raised by the Bill.

This Bill is Senator Barrett’s second run at university structures. His first, the Higher Education and Research (Consolidation and Improvement) Bill 2014, was introduced in the Seanad and had its Second Reading on 2 April last. It was discussed in detail at the time by Prof Steve Hedley (UCC) (here, here, here, here, and here), and Senator Barrett responded to those posts here.…

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In an entertaining and erudite article in the Irish Times last week, Robert Strong (William Lyne Wilson Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, and a visiting Fulbright Scholar as Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History in the School of History and Archives at University College Dublin) searched for evidence that the quote in the title of this post should properly be attributed to William Butler Yeats (pictured left). Although regularly attributed to Yeats, he found no proof to support the attribution; and he drew the following lessons from his quest:

• Don’t believe everything you hear from a speaker standing at a podium.
• Don’t believe everything you read in books.
• Always be suspicious of information you find on the internet.
• Do your own research about something that strikes your fancy.
• Take some joy in finding things out for yourself even if what you find is complicated and incomplete.
• Pursue the truth wherever it takes you.
• And don’t be afraid to challenge prominent people and published sources if you find evidence they might be wrong.

These lessons are a perfect example of the point of the quote: education really is about lighting a fire, encouraging people to think for themselves, rather than simply fill up with and repeat what they have heard.…

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I’ve used the above image before, but it’s too good not to use again. University strategic planning is required by section 34 of the Universities Act, 1997 (also here). At best, it is a necessary evil; at worst, it borders on the absurd.

Strategy is all about long-term planning; tactics are all about the individual steps to get there. Most university strategic plans tend to be long on strategy but short on tactics: they are usually good on long-term ambition, but weak on short- and medium- term steps to achieve that ambition. A good plan would outline the detailed tactics necessary to achieve the strategy – and if the tactics can’t be planned, that should demonstrate that the strategy is unsound.

Sometimes, the best strategy is “steady as she goes”, but the statutory requirement for strategic planning carries with it an unexamined impetus for change for its own sake; and, whilst both strategy and tactics carry their own risks, strategic planning for the sake of strategic planning carries the risk of too much change for no reason other than the impetus for change supposedly demanded by the corporatist strategic-planning cycle.

The educationandstuff blog today captures (for DCU) what I think about the process:

A Strategy Blitz

… Most strategic plans make hard reading.

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