The Higher Education Strategy Review Group, widely reported to favour the reintroduction of third-level fees, is finally due to report shortly. There is no convincing argument against the return of third-level fees. In fact, it is likely that the Irish education as a whole is damaged because of the persistence of ‘free’ third-level education. The [...]
Department of Economics Research Symposium Summer 2010 Tuesday, June 29, 2010 Room G_05, Brookfield Health Sciences Building, UCC 9.00 – 11.00 Chair: Dr Niall O’Sullivan, Chair – Department of Economics Research Committee 9.00 – 9.10 Opening Remarks and Welcome Aileen Murphy, Andrew Briggs (University of Glasgow) and Elizabeth Fenwick (University of Glasgow) “Cost Effectiveness of [...]
An interesting working paper from the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard by Christian Ketels of the World Bank. The subtle argument being made is that policies which target competitiveness improvements will achieve greater prosperity growth – and will increase exports – more than policies which target export growth directly. There is actually quite [...]
The Irish Times carries another front page report on grade inflation in the Irish education sector, citing an unpublished internal TCD study. The statistics presented do seem to indicate a remarkable rise in the percentages of higher grades at third level. This is taken as evidence of grade inflation (I hate the phrase ‘dumbing down’). [...]
The Irish Times reports a worried Minister for Education is going to investigate the possibility of grade inflation in Irish education. One wonders if the Minister is drawing on the same number of conversations (2) that he did when suggesting lecturers teach too few hours. The article states It is widely expected that the reviews [...]
This is an interesting (and scary) visual representation of how Irish unemployment has changed on a county by county basis since April 2005.
The New York Times seems to think Ireland is a candidate to default just like Dubai. The Irish government may want Irish commentators to ‘wear the green jersey’ and do the economic analysis equivalnent of smiling and nodding – but then those pesky Americans go and mention the unmentionable.
Tomorrow I am participating in a public debate on research funding hosted by the Long Room Hub in Trinity. The debate is entitled Academic Research: is it of any value to the taxpayer?. Speaking on the opposite side (of course argung that it is of value) is Professor Poul Holm (TCD) and Professor Luke O’Neill (TCD). The [...]
Bertie Ahern wondered in 2007 why critics of government economic policy didn’t commit suicide. Now he thinks they should do something productive like ‘dig the garden or grow bluebells’. The comments were made to VIP magazine.
Here is a link to the slides from a presentation on the Smart Economy by Eoin O’Leary and I at the Dublin Economics Workshop in Kenmare this weekend.