rElearn

Around this time in Ireland there is usually a lot of discussion of how people are ignoring careers in Science, where our Knowledge Economy will come from, and a lamentation of a lack secondary students doing well in higher Maths.

There was a heart-felt letter in the Irish Times yesterday from a Science PhD in the context of this perennial debate:

Madam, – Prof Garret A FitzGerald seeks to address the depressing depictions of a career in science (Opinion, August 13th) but he presents a rose-tinted view of the life of a researcher that is unrealistic when applied to early-career scientists.

The practical side of being a contract post-doctoral researcher, with years of experience but no short-term prospect of a permanent job, became clear to me recently on learning that getting approval for a mortgage will rely solely on my (non-scientist) partner’s salary. My eight years of third- and fourth-level education plus years of post-doctoral research experience are worth nothing in the real world.

I agree wholeheartedly with many of the positive points Prof FitzGerald makes about a research career, such as the opportunities to travel, to contribute to greater good and to find intellectual fulfilment. However, intellectual fulfilment is not enough to pay the rent, or the mortgage if you can get one. Prof FitzGerald states that as a scientist “every day you can do something different. You can’t imagine what you will be working on in a year’s time”.

Many of us also have to wonder where we will be working in a year’s time, due to the nature of post-doctoral research contract positions. It is an oversimplification to say that to conduct independent research all you have to do is “convince a group of your peers that what you want to do is worthwhile”.

In Ireland, to qualify for most of the research funding schemes that allow this independence you must also have a permanent position at a university. With the current public sector hiring freeze and the constraints on university finances, permanent positions for young researchers are looking ever more scarce.

I love what I do and my research has been successful and is internationally competitive, but when I was a young and optimistic school-leaver I chose a career that interested me and I did not envision that when I would reach my 30s I might not qualify for a mortgage or that I would be uncertain of what I would be doing in a year’s time.

In a week when much is being said about the need to encourage students to follow careers in science, I was prompted to write this letter to stress to students that they should give careful consideration to the practicalities of a career that requires long years of study, hard work and discipline, and will quite likely lead you to emigrate. In addition there is no guarantee of generous financial reward and no job security. If this sounds depressing, it’s just how I see it from where I stand. – Yours, etc,

Dr SARAH HARNEY,

Department of Physiology,

Trinity College Dublin,

Dublin 2.
Irish Times, August 17th http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0817/1224252678097.html

This letter seems to fit with the CAO points required for Computing courses across Irish third level institutions again this year, which is an indication of their relative unpopularity. It is not necessarily an indication of their difficulty however which is a problem for some entrants to these courses. The 480 points required for primary teaching on one particular course is well in excess of those for most IT courses. In one Institute of Technology you can do an IT degree or a degree in IT management for little over 200 points. Some great students may take and eventually graduate IT programmes around the country. Certainly however, a great many will not complete.

How does this square with another big CAO story of recent days - that of teen entrepreneur John Collison who scored eight A1s in his leaving (600 points)? Collison and his brother have made, on paper, millions from IT having founded and then sold their own successful IT company. They must surely be poster-boys for the Knowledge Economy. Not only that but unlike almost all other students who will score 600 points this year, or last year, or next year, John Collison has not chosen to study medicine but rather Science. He has been accepted to study Science in Harvard. Sadly we do not seem yet have Science or Technology courses in Ireland that would attract world class candidates. Something to ponder for the architects of our Knowledge Economy.

Dear international reader, let me give you some background into the Irish Education system. Best practice for new (and some not-so-new) primary schools during the last two decades in Ireland has been to house them in temporary wooden cabins known as portacabins. These huts are rented for roughly the equivalent price of a mortgage on a bricks and mortar school which would be owned by the state. Once the portacabins have been rented the parents then must engage on a decades long campaign for the government to even to commit to permanent buildings. Eventually a commitment is secured and the parents enter phase two where they campaign for the building to actually take place. So far pretty straight forward. Phase three your local elected representative gives you a spiteful kick in the teeth. Expect to see a lot more political suicide like this over the next year:

From this week’s Sunday Tribue:

Row after Cork TD said portacabin school good enough for town that doesn’t support him

Conor McMorrow

FIANNA Fáil TD Ned O’Keefe is at the centre of a major row in his Cork East constituency after he said he would not help a community to obtain new school buildings because he does not get any votes in the area.

The row erupted on local radio station C103 on Friday morning after O’Keefe claimed that Rathcormac national school should not be a priority for government funding because it has “a wonderful layout of portacabins”.

O’Keefe made his controversial comments on Patricia Messinger’s Cork Today programme, on which he said, “I’ll prioritise as a politician for my own area the areas that I think are right and necessary and where I get my support from.”

Messinger asked O’Keefe if he only looked after people who gave him their vote. The Cork TD replied: “Equals being equals, I’ll defend my own people. I have never been top of the list in Rathcormac so if Rathcormac wants me to support them, they can support me.”

His comments sparked outrage on the airwaves and the local radio station was swamped with calls from angry parents in the area.

O’Keefe’s comments on portacabins fuelled the row when he complimented the “architectural work” of the portacabins as they have a “wonderful layout” and are “well-engineered”.

He continued: “There is no stigma attached to being taught in a portacabin. Many people in offices and administration across the country work in portacabins and they are delighted to have them.”

Defending himself, the 66-year-old former junior minister said, “I have been right in many of the things I have said in the last five to seven years, even on the economy, so I am not prepared to stand back and listen to people abusing me and telling me this, that and the other thing.”

Claire Flynn, chairwoman of Rathcormac Parents’ Association, came on the radio and said: “I want to ask Ned O’Keefe, how come our children go in there and they are passing out with the heat during the summer and in winter we have to put coats on our kids to keep them warm in the portacabins?”

But O’Keefe stood his ground and said that “you get the tallies and you will see I was never very welcome in Rathcormac”.

July 5, 2009