Steps to Improve
Along with all academic staff at Maynooth University I received an email this afternoon from the Vice-President for Research and Innovation, which contained the following request:
Well, I certainly won’t be providing any such lists at any time for this or any similar purpose, let alone by next Wednesday! I will be boycotting the QS World University Rankings and I urge any of my “peers” who are contacted about it to do likewise.
I assume that request this is a panicky reaction to the fact that Maynooth is so low in the current current QS league tables and falling in most others. This decline is a direct result of policies implemented by the Management Team at Maynooth, pushing up a student-staff ratio that is already the highest in Ireland, and starving core activities of resources while squandering millions on management salaries and perks – latest example of which is €500,000 on a luxury taxi service for “priority staff members”; you can guess who that means. ..
I would prefer that the people in charge of Maynooth University made some attempt to improve teaching and research – you know, the things that a university is suppose to do – rather than try to game these ridiculous league tables. Such an approach, however, seems to be out of the question. Maynooth’s race to the bottom is bound to continue unless and until attitudes change at the top.
In the Dark 
October 19, 2024 at 7:31 am
Ittaes some courage to criticise the senior administrators at your own institution, and I salute you Peter. Have you considered joint action with other department heads and senior academics?
October 19, 2024 at 11:00 am
I don’t think courage really comes into it. I am approaching retirement, not interested in promotion, so I’m not concerned at what the management reaction might be. It is much harder for younger people to speak out for fear of bullying which makes it more important that people like me do so.
The President has tried to neutralize all forms of criticism, but I think the dam will burst pretty soon.
October 19, 2024 at 8:24 am
Yes it does but Peter is speaking the truth and there is even less justification for this behaviour in Academia then there is in Industry.
October 19, 2024 at 12:45 pm
Would be more cost effective to buy some cars and employ a driver?
October 19, 2024 at 12:46 pm
It would be more cost effective for the managers to follow the same rules as the rest of us.
October 19, 2024 at 8:55 pm
Yes, it could be.
The correct response for management should be not to worry unduly about rankings, but to try to drive up the academic reputation by funding improvements in research quality.
October 19, 2024 at 7:42 pm
It’s not clear how compiling a list of peers in other institutions would help a university’s rankings. It makes little sense.
October 19, 2024 at 7:45 pm
I think the idea is that people would be contacted and “encouraged” to give a high rating in the reputation survey.
October 19, 2024 at 8:46 pm
I see. It’s not clear to me whether that would work particularly well. Or at all.
October 19, 2024 at 8:48 pm
Me neither, which is why I think it is a panic measure.
October 20, 2024 at 7:14 am
Almost, but not quite. QS get their lists of academics and employers from the universities themselves – then QS would contact them. Your university management are assuming, no doubt correctly, that people you suggest will at least have heard of you and will mostly give a good account of you. I must say that Maynooth seem rather slow off the mark on this – certainly at my institution we’ve been encouraged along these lines for several years now – which some of us have gone along with and others have ignored.
October 20, 2024 at 11:52 am
Thank you for the clarification. I do get contacted myself every year for the QS rankings but I bin the emails immediately.
I find this whole system very strange because it seems to assume that the reputation of a university is determined by the esteem of individual academics, whereas the reason for Maynooth’s steadily sinking reputation is its terrible management.
October 23, 2024 at 9:52 pm
Is it the case that the most senior committee at Maynoth is *not* a committee of Department or Faculty Heads chaired by the Vice-Chancellor? If not, what is it? Again if not, is this anomaly due to Maynooth’s origins as a spinoff from a Catholic theological college?
October 24, 2024 at 8:57 am
The most powerful committee at Maynooth is the University Executive, which consists of the President’s entourage of Vice-Presidents, the Bursar, and the Director of Human Resources, etc. The Deans of the Faculties sit on this but are outnumbered substantially. Department Heads have no power but are just told what to do by this Executive committee via the Deans.
This is not specific to Maynooth. All universities I have worked in have a similar system of governance. It exists everywhere and has the same result everywhere.
October 24, 2024 at 10:12 am
Who are all these vice-presidents?
October 24, 2024 at 10:32 am
Flunkies appointed by the President:
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/about-us/leadership-and-management
October 28, 2024 at 2:28 pm
[…] too old to be making memes, but it’s a Bank Holiday so,in the light of recent developments at Maynooth University, I thought I’d give it a go. If this one proves popular there are many more I could […]