Thursday, February 12, 2015

Academic Tenure revisited




In 2002, I was illegally dismissed from my tenured job at DCU. The “university” (which has never been accredited) used a little-known provision in the 1990 industrial relations act that allows single dismissals, putting every public service job in Ireland at risk. It has never returned even the clothes i left there, let alone my software. Several generous settlement offers were made; I chose instead to expose the issue through the industrial relations process, and have refused the monies awarded to me.

Paul Cahill, the object of another pogrom by DCU, asked me in 2008 to take over academictenure.blogspot.com in order to expose what was going on. In 2009, before my case, I received legal advice it would damage my chances for reinstatement. I left it up.

In 2012, Cahill destroyed the blog. I still have maintained most of it on another blog and in my book “Ireland in crisis”. Cahill should reinstate the blog in its original form

However, having fought so hard for academic tenure, it is clear to me that many - if not most – of the academics hired since the Celtic tiger years are not fit for purpose. A pro-active hiring on non-Irish people commenced in the 1990's leading to the likes of this;


We cannot ask Irish people to pay 100k+ for nonsense such as this event. I propose the following revision of tenure, with staff being offered early retirement if the new scenario, wherein they have a “hunting license” and office rather than a guaranteed huge salary, is not appealing. MOOCS allow academics attract huge audiences;

No-one should lose tenure; conversely, academics should give more value for money
Tenure’s elements should be distinguished; freedom from redundancy, the right to offer courses  and a place of work until 65 upheld for “legacy” academics but pay, the right to supervise students at graduate level and so on should be made subject to performance.
Indeed, there is a case for granting tenure to well-performing private college academics
We are trying to free the academic process from the state and simultaneously to ease taxpayers’ burden

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