Strategic Plans
Maynooth University is in the middle a consultation exercise involving the construction a new Strategic Plan Envisioning Our Future for the period 2023-28. This is something higher education institutions do from time to time, and it usually involves dreaming up ways of spending money they haven’t got on things they don’t need. I’ve seen a few Strategic Plans in my time, but yet to see one that was worth the glossy paper it was expensively printed on. I can’t envision this one being any different,
You could dismiss the current Strategic Plan as merely an irrelevance but it is having a real effect, in that it has completed distracted the University management away from crucial operational matters, such as new appointments and fixing various failing systems. Moreover, it seems very likely, there being little chance of a substantial increase in government funding, that any new “initiatives” arising from the Strategic Plan will be paid for by further plundering already hard-pressed departmental budgets.
The other day I looked up “Strategy” in a dictionary and found
Noun: a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.
The biggest issue is not the plan of action bit, it’s the articulation of the aim and the interpretation of long-term as being “the next five years”. I know I am excessively old-fashioned but I think a university – especially a publicly funded one – should be aiming to be as good as possible at teaching and research. If we have to have a plan for the next five years, at a bare minimum it should involve increasing the investment in its existing departments and providing better teaching facilities. I don’t see either of those happening at all. We’ve got a new teaching building, but nothing has been done to improve any of the other teaching rooms on campus. It’s very dispiriting for front-line academic staff to appearance such neglect of what should be the core functions of the institution.
Anyway, now that I am no longer Head of Department and free of the requirement to attend pointless meeting after pointless meeting I am going to focus what remains of my energy on teaching and research, even if The Management does not deem these important.
Tomorrow (19th September) is the first week of teaching term for the 2022-23. Though new students don’t officially start until 26th September, some are already here and I have even spoken to them. Although we have had a very rough couple of years, our first-year numbers look healthy, which is a good point to be handing over the reins. I have two new PhD student and one Research Masters student arriving this academic year which should help me with my research plans.
Undergraduate science degrees and PhD degrees in Maynooth are typically of four years’ duration. I’ll be sixty during this academic year and over the last few weeks I have been doing a bit of strategic planning of my own. Although I can’t be made to retire until I’m 70, I think it will be a good time to go when the incoming UG & PG cohort finishes, i.e. four years from now. I love teaching and enjoy my research but there is a point at which one should step aside and make way for someone younger.
Assuming, that is, that: (a) I live that long; (b) I can sell my old house and pay off my mortgage; (c) my USS pension is not worthless by then; (d) I’m not sacked in the meantime for insubordination.
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In the Dark 
September 19, 2022 at 10:10 am
You say you ‘have’ to retire at 70. But the EU removed compulsory retirement ages except in certain circumstances. I found the information below relating to Ireland:
There is no statutory mandatory retirement age from employment for private sector employees in Ireland. The Employment Equality Acts 1998-2021 also prohibit discrimination in employment on a number of grounds, including age. However, there is an exception that allows employers to impose a mandatory retirement age on employees provided they can show that the retirement age is objectively and reasonably justified by a legitimate aim and the means of achieving that aim are appropriate and necessary. The retirement age must also be consistently applied. If these criteria are not met, the mandatory retirement age could be seen as discriminatory, and this could prove costly as the Employment Equality Acts provide for compensation of up to a maximum of two years’ remuneration for a successful age discrimination claim.
September 19, 2022 at 10:44 am
Well in any case I’m not intending to carry on shouldering such a heavy teaching burden until then.
September 20, 2022 at 9:22 am
now that I am no longer Head of Department and free of the requirement to attend pointless meeting after pointless meeting
The number of these will go down only if senior people coordinate to make it so while they are still involved, not afterwards. Longer term, department heads need to tell senior administrators who answers to whom. The way to proceed is to be courteous but insistent and never, ever, back down.
September 20, 2022 at 9:45 am
My replacement “enjoyed” his first meeting of Academic Council yesterday afternoon, all 2 1/2 hours of it…