Archive for IFUT

Getting there…

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on May 23, 2025 by telescoper

Despite having to take time out today to attend an Emergency Meeting of IFUT (about matters which may or may not be public soon), my marking duties are about halfway done and roughly on schedule. For one module, I have 60% of the assessment scores for 32 students and, for the other, about 40% of the assessment for 23 students. I make that about 51.6 of the total. The last piece of the puzzle won’t arrive on my desk until Wednesday morning, by which time I hope to have completed 100% of the 32, leaving just 60% of the 23, amounting to about 16.7% of the total, to be done in the second half of next week. I hope this clarifies the situation.

Meanwhile the weather has taken a turn for the worse, no doubt because of the imminent Bank Holiday weekend in the UK. Monday 26th is a holiday there. In Ireland, the next holiday is on Monday June 2nd, Lá Saoire i mí an Mheithimh See if you can pronounce that! Next Friday (30th May) is the day of the season finale of the National Symphony Orchestra at the National Concert Hall, which is Mahler’s 9th Symphony. I hope I’ll be finished marking in time for that so I can relax over the holiday weekend after what will have been a very hectic week and take some time off the following week to do a bit of travelling to attend to some personal matters.

Next week will start off, however, with the PhD viva of one of my students. I won’t be attending the actual examination, of course, but will be there for the subsequent formalities. It’s a distraction from grading, but a nice one.

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Lecture Recordings Again

Posted in Cardiff, Covid-19, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on March 5, 2025 by telescoper

Long before the pandemic restrictions – was it really five years ago that all that started? – I posted an item about an innovation I encountered when I moved to Sussex in 2013, namely lecture capture facilities which

…allow lecturers to record videos of their own lectures which are then made available for students to view online. This is of course very beneficial for students with special learning requirements, but in the spirit of inclusive teaching I think it’s good that all students can access such material. Some faculty were apparently a little nervous that having recordings of lectures available online would result in falling attendances at lectures, but in fact the evidence indicates precisely the opposite effect. Students find the recorded version adds quite a lot of value to the “live” event by allowing them to clarify things they might not have not noted down clearly.

A few years later, when I did some teaching back in Cardiff, I discovered that lecture recording had become normal practice there too. The main difference was that Sussex had a proper policy on important matters such as who could see the recordings, and what they could be used for, which allayed some staff fears about snooping and the inhibition of academic freedon; the policy at Cardiff had not been fully developed in advance of the rollout of lecture capture, which I think was a big mistake.

Anyway, before the pandemic we didn’t really have any facilities at Maynooth University for recording lectures so it certainly wasn’t normal practice. With the onset of Covid-19 lecture recordings and live streams became the only way to carry out teaching and we lecturers made the best of what we had at home. A couple of years ago, after restrictions were lifted, I posted about a meeting between student representatives and staff in the (then) Department of Theoretical Physics during which students criticized, among other examples of inadequate teaching resources. Part of the reason for this is the drastic shortage of student accommodation which means many students have to commute long distances to campus and have difficulty doing that every day for lectures.

I – and I’m speaking personally here – wish we could offer lecture recordings as routine. Unfortunately, however, and much to my disappointment, Senior Management at Maynooth University has discouraged lecture recording as a matter of policy and has not invested in the technology required to enable it, so it is not practicable anyway.

In my view the benefits of lecture capture far outweigh the disadvantages, and we should incorporate recordings of lectures as part of our standard teaching provision, as a supplement to learning rather than to replace face-to-face sessions. Every student learns in a different way and we should therefore be doing as much as we possibly can to provide a diverse range of teaching resources so that each can find the combination that suits them best. Technology allows us to do this far better now than in the past.

Some really enjoy live in-person lecture sessions, especially the ability to interact with the lecturer and the shared experience with other students, but others don’t like them as much. Others have reasons (such as disability) for not being able to attend in-person lectures, so providing recordings can help them. Others still have difficulty attending all lectures because of a dratic shortage of student accommodation. Why not in any case provide recordings for everyone? That seems to me to be a more inclusive approach.

The problem with lecture capture in Maynooth is that we will need to improve the cameras and recording equipment in the large lecture rooms to make it possible for lectures with a significant mathematical content. The existing setups in teaching rooms do not easily allow the lecturer to record material on a whiteboard or blackboard. In Cardiff, for example, the larger rooms had more than one camera, usually one on the lectern and one on the screen or whiteboard (which has to be placed further away and therefore needs to be of higher resolution). In Maynooth we only have small low-resolution cameras in the teaching rooms. In fact I have far better facilities in my study at home – provided at my own expense – than my employer is prepared to provide on campus.

Anyway, the reason for mentioning all this is that I saw an article today in the University Times (a student newspaper based at Trinity College, Dublin). I can only infer that someone at Trinity has floated the idea of mandatory lecture recordings, because the piece argues against them even with

…established guidelines for their use, re-use, storage, and dissemination, and a ban of their use during industrial action.

I think a properly negotiated agreement with the Trade Union representing staff (e.g. IFUT, of which I am a member) covering these points would allow me to accept mandatory lecture recordings. Worries about covert monitoring or unauthorized dissemination on social media would hopefully be assuaged by such an agreement. A particular issue in the UK, given the current meltdown of its higher education sector, Senior Management may sack lecturers to save money but keep using their recordings. That would be unconscionable, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be tried.

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Industrial Action at BIMM Dublin

Posted in Politics with tags , , , , on February 8, 2025 by telescoper

I heard today that after a strike ballot, members of the Irish Federation of University Teachers at the BIMM Institute in Dublin (Francis Street, Dublin 8) will be taking industrial action from Monday 10th February in response to proposed redundancies. The proposed dates are:

  • Monday, 10th February                  From 0830 to 1600
  • Tuesday, 11th February                 From 0830 to 1600
  • Saturday, 15th February (Open Day)  Time to be confirmed
  • Wednesday, 19th February              From 0830 to 1600
  • Thursday, 20th February                From 0830 to 1600

I understand the students at BIMM are organizing demonstrations in support of staff threatened with redundancy. As an IFUT member I wish to take the opportunity provided by this blog express solidarity with those taking part in industrial action and hope for a negotiated resolution to the dispute. I am not based in Dublin, so I can’t attend the picket lines in person to show support on weekdays, but I am planning to attend on Saturday 15th February. I will also be wearing my IFUT badge…

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On Budgets

Posted in Education, Finance, Maynooth, Politics with tags on October 11, 2023 by telescoper

Yesterday was Budget Day in Ireland, when the Irish Government had to decide how to deal with an unprecedented fiscal surplus. Would it use the available funds to help the homeless and those in poverty? Would it provide much-needed investment in public services and infrastructure? Or would it use the funds to buy the next General Election? As far as I see it, the decision was mainly to go with the third option, paying only lip service to the other two. That’s not surprising, as it’s the sort of thing the sort of people in the current Government have tended to do over the years. Short-termism is the order of the day.

When it comes to third level education, there was some good news for students. Tuition fees currently €3K will be cut by €1K but, disappointingly, the reduction is for one year only. As far as I can understand the news, extra Government funding to universities will replace the loss of fee income, but not provide the general uplift that was hoped for.

A couple of weeks ago, the Leaderene President of Maynooth University sent around a letter written by the Irish Universities Association (IUA) to the Taoiseach. You can find the PDF here. The Government must have been unconvinced by the arguments presented therein, because despite having more than enough dosh to pay for the requested increase in funding, no such largesse was forthcoming.

Despite this setback, Maynooth University’s Management hiring frenzy continues unabated. The latest new position to be advertised is a Director of International Recruitment and Conversion. No, I have no idea what it means either. Perhaps someone in Government looked at how much money Maynooth has burned recently on so many new positions and decided that third level institutions must have plenty of cash already?

In reality of course, the horde of new managers have been funded by diverting funds away from teaching and research. Maynooth already has the highest student-staff ratio of the eight comparable universities, a situation which will only get worse. As funding for teaching gets squeezed to pay for ballooning bureaucracy, departments have no alternative but to employ casual staff instead of permanent academics. As a report produced by the union IFUT makes clear, precarity is endemic in the Irish third level system,as it overwork and job-related stress.

I hope this interpretation is wrong but, the way I see it, none of this is accidental. During the pandemic, University bosses saw teaching staff take on greatly increased workloads that enabled their institutions to generate large surpluses. Having established just how much they could exploit their workforce, the way ahead will be more of the same. The deliberate policy of understaffing, overwork, and casualization will only accelerate. The Irish University system is heading for a crisis on the same scale as that in the United Kingdom, and lack of public funding is only part of the reason…

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Defend Democracy at Maynooth!

Posted in Education, Maynooth, Pedantry with tags , , on August 20, 2023 by telescoper
Photo by Element5 Digital on Pexels.com

A few weeks ago I blogged about the decision by the Management of Maynooth University  to scrap elections to the Governing Authority of the University. This was a shock to me and many other members of the Faculty at Maynooth and elsewhere. Coming out of the pandemic, during which we all undertook countless hours of unpaid overtime to keep the University going, I think we have the right to expect more from the Management than this expression of outright contempt. If the proposal is accepted, I fear much worse things are in store.

In response, the union IFUT, of which I am a member, started a petition protesting against this decision which now has over a thousand signatures.

We call on Maynooth University to reverse their decision to instigate selection and to restore the democratic election process for all five staff representatives on the Governing Authority.

The decision by MU’s Governing Authority and senior management to replace democratic elections with a selection process, whereby they assume, with the assistance of a private recruitment firm, the responsibility of handpicking staff representatives, is an attack on basic principles of democracy and good governance.

I agree with this wholeheartedly, and have signed the petition. If you agree please consider signing the petition too. You don’t have to be at Maynooth to sign it, nor even in Ireland. The issue faced here is far wider than one institution. It’s about the fundamental issue how a public university should be governed. Maynooth needs to learn that the institution should be run by consent and not coercion. A deliberate policy of alienating the academic, administrative and other support staff that make a university what it is is not the way forward.

The current Governing Authority is holding an emergency meeting on Tuesday 22nd August, to consider the mess created by University leadership. It has a simple way out. Scrap the current plan and allow all five internal representatives to be elected. What can be controversial about that? The Management has failed to articulate any argument against elections other than, apparently, that it considers them “old-fashioned”. Insisting on selection versus election they have also refused to explain how the selection process would work. What is to stop the President loading the GA with Vice-Presidents that she herself appointed?

There’s a an article in today’s Sunday Independent that reports on the outcome of an IFUT meeting held last Friday in which members were unanimous in supporting elections for all staff representatives on the GA. It’s now up to the Governing Authority to decide whether it wants a functioning university or not.

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Maynooth in the News

Posted in Biographical, Euclid, Maynooth, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , on July 12, 2023 by telescoper

I was in a meeting this morning at which it was mentioned that the recent launch of the Euclid satellite has generated quite a lot of publicity in the news media for Maynooth University. There’s a piece in the Sunday Times (Ireland Edition), another in Silicon Republic, and an online feature for RTÉ Brainstorm as well as a radio segment on Morning Ireland and another on NewsTalk.

Maynooth University plugged these items in on the “Maynooth in the News” feed on its main webpage, along with many other items that show the University in a good light.

Conspicuous by its absence from that feed, however, is the biggest story surrounding Maynooth University in recent days, namely the appalling decision by the President to scrap elections to the Governing Authority of the University in favour of having representatives chosen only by the President. This is just one example of the increasingly intransigent and authoritarian management of the University. Can anyone justify the complete disenfranchisement of the staff of the University from the Governance of the university? Or that an Executive body should select the Board to which it is supposed to be accountable?

I know I’m not the only person employed by this University who thinks this decision is a terrible one – my Union, IFUT is strongly opposed- but it has been already been imposed and now we have no say. At least you can read about, e.g. here in the Times Higher.

One story you can’t read about however concerns the outcomes of Maynooth University’s “Staff Climate and Culture Survey” which was carried out in 2022 with the promise made to participants that results would be published in early 2023. No such results were ever communicated to staff and all mention of this survey has been wiped off the University’s web pages. I don’t know why this happened, but I venture to suggest that if the results had been good the Maynooth publicity team would not have hesitated to publish them.

Since the Management of Maynooth University has chosen to close off any internal channels by which academic and other staff can communicate their views, it seems that the only means of communication open to us is via the external media. Perhaps the Times Higher will run a story on the Curious Case of the Missing Staff Survey?

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Building Momentum

Posted in Biographical, Maynooth, Politics with tags , , on September 29, 2022 by telescoper

There may be no longer be any momentum in the direction of building a new Student Centre at Maynooth, but over the last few days I’ve been studying the details of the review of the “Building Momentum” pay proposal for public services employees over the next couple of years. The proposal has been put to a ballot of members of various public sector unions, including the one to which I belong, the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT).

Unlike what happens in the United Kingdom, there is a single agreement covering all public sector workers and the unions that represent them and, also unlike the United Kingdom, University staff are treated as public sector employees, rather like civil servants. We are all members of the same pension scheme too, also unlike the UK.

Back in August, there was talk of industrial action over the inadequacy of the Government’s existing offer given the recent increases in the cost of living, but the ballot on that was suspended to allow voting on the revised offer that emerged from a review, perhaps in response to union pressure. As IFUT explained,

Arising from this review a set of proposals were agreed in August which include additional pay increases for members in 2022 and increases in 2023.  When the additional increases are taken into account, members’ pay would increase by a minimum of 9.5% during the period covered by Building Momentum (2021 – 2023).

Although expressing reservations, which I share, IFUT states

After careful consideration and scrutiny of the proposal, and taking into account the views of the membership as expressed by our Council, the Executive Committee advises that IFUT members should vote to accept these proposals.

I would have preferred if a bit more could have been done for University teachers at the lower end of the pay scales but, on balance, together with the cost-of-living measures announced in Tuesday’s budget, I think it’s a reasonable compromise, which will bring some degree of certainty to the financial situation of many people. I have therefore voted to accept the offer.

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Quiet Quitting

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , on August 16, 2022 by telescoper

Not long ago I had lunch with a friend and former colleague from Sussex now working elsewhere. During the conversation I found myself saying words to the effect of “It’s only easy being a manager of something if you don’t care”. Speaking in the context of University management I meant “care” about the things that matter, i.e. staff and students and teaching and research, not metrics, rankings and key performance indicators.

Over the years that I’ve worked in universities, I’ve seen them systematically taken over by people who really don’t care at all about the important things. The result among ordinary staff is exhaustion caused by the overwork required to meet arbitrary criteria of productivity imposed by a remote and uncaring managerial class. Universities are thus a microcosm of neoliberal society at large, with the management being the propertied class, the academics being the workers, and the students being mere commodities.

The drive to alienate and demoralize staff through overwork accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic. Teaching staff were required to transform their working methods, undertake countless hours of unpaid overtime and suffer long periods of isolation and stress. Being a Head of Department with lots of responsibilities but no actual power and no reduction in teaching load to compensate for the administrative burden, compounded this They did it because they knew there was an emergency and because they actually care. In return for this sacrifice they have generally received no appreciation except for platitudes and nothing by way of financial compensation, with the notable exception of Queen’s University Belfast which paid a bonus to staff in recognition of their exceptional efforts. Well done to them, but they are the exception rather than the rule. Elsewhere the only reward for efforts during the pandemic looks likely to be real-terms cuts in pay.

My worry, which is rapidly becoming reality, is that in the post-pandemic era The Management, aware of how far their employees were prepared to go during the pandemic, will continue to take them completely for granted, increase their workload by recruiting more and more students to be taught with fewer and fewer resources, all of it driven by financial targets. Why do we continue to put up with this gross exploitation? Are we doomed forever to labour under the dead weight of managerialism?

Over the past few weeks I’ve seen a number of articles about quiet quitting, most recently this one in the Guardian. Roughly speaking “quiet quitting” means fulfilling one’s contract but not going any further – no work at evening or weekends, taking one’s full holiday entitlement, and so on. Staff have generally done these things because they care but that care has been and is still being systematically exploited. Indeed, it says something about the way higher education institutions operate nowadays that “working to contract” is generally regarded as a form of industrial action! Universities would grind to a halt without the good will of staff, and there’s very little of that still left. In my own case, my employer still hasn’t fulfilled the terms of my employment contract almost five years after I joined.

So am I now going to join the ranks of those quitting quietly? You might very well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment. What I will say is that my union, IFUT, is going to ballot its members next month on industrial action over pay. I think you can probably guess which way I’ll be voting…

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Union Matters

Posted in Education, Politics with tags , , , , , on October 14, 2018 by telescoper

The above collection of goodies arrived last week in a Welcome Pack from the Irish Federation of University Teachers (IFUT), my new trade union. I sent in an application to join some time ago, and was getting a bit worried that it might have been lost, but then confirmation arrived in the form of my membership card along with a pen, a badge, a lanyard, an application form for a Credit Union and various other bits and bobs. It’s only by standing together that academics in Irish universities have any hope of exerting enough pressure on the Government to get it to reverse the persistent underfunding of Higher Education in this country. Even then it won’t be easy – last week’s budget had nothing whatsoever in it for universities or students.

Incidentally, according to the online budget calculator, I’ll be a princely €28 per month better off next year as a result of small changes in taxation, but it seems to me that the priority should have been to help the less well off and it failed to do that. No doubt, however, the cautious approach to public finances shown by the Government is largely down to the uncertain effects of Brexit.

While I am on about unions, some of the readers of this blog will recall that I was participating in industrial action by UCU (the Universities and Colleges Union) in the UK earlier this year in relation to proposed cuts to pensions in the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). I have since left that scheme, deferring my benefits from it until I retire, but I couldn’t resist passing on a link to an article I read yesterday, which argues that USS’s valuation (which resulted in a deficit) rests on a large and demonstrable mistake and, when this is corrected there is no deficit as at 31 March 2018 and no need for detrimental changes to benefits or contributions.

Could it be that all that pain was caused by an accounting error? If so, then heads should roll!

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