Rónán Burtenshaw
Deputy News Editor
A University Times investigation into the practice of using research grants to buy out teaching has revealed a worrying trend of devaluing undergraduate education.
Academics in Trinity College have always had access to a facility that allows them to use money from research grants to compensate for the teaching portion of their workload. This teaching portion would then be passed on to a contract lecturer, who is paid per module they replace.
This practice has been used in the past to give what’s known as “relief” to academics. This would mean that it is used when an academic wishes to engage in a large-scale research project or go on other forms of sabbatical, whether for personal reasons or to improve their ability to carry out their job.
The process involved in attaining research grants is as follows. An application is made for a grant to a specified body; these could be private companies, funds or semi-state entities. This could be a company like Pfizer for medico-pharmaceutical grants, or bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency, Economic and Social Research Institute or the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences for their respective fields.
If this application is successful, the money is deposited with central College authorities, often with conditions attached to its use. The Principal Investigator (P.I.) is then responsible for the funds. A P.I. is the chief signatory or leader of the team applying for the grant.
Some research grants are not for the purposes of buying-out teaching; they are used for smaller, largely overhead purposes such as equipment and travel. However, the majority of the larger grants would necessitate some form of replacement teaching to be paid-for using the grant money, relieving the academic of their teaching duties for a specific duration.
Trinity College views this practice as beneficial for the student body and the university as a whole. It believes that the practice expands the knowledge of lecturers who teach students, improves the standing of the College as a research university, brings funds into the institution and helps in our efforts to rise in the league tables.
Students are likely to find some aspects of the practice troubling, however. This is particularly the case in light of its expansion in recent years. Our investigation led us to senior academics who described a “marked increase” in teaching buy-outs from temporary relief to established practice.
The question of who is involved in replacement teaching is of central importance. College does not have a system for ensuring that those who leave on sabbatical or because of research grants are replaced by those with comparable qualifications.
The University Times’ investigation produced evidence of four specific instances where Professors and other senior academics were replaced by contract lecturers who were not in possession of a PhD.
This is not necessarily an indication of poorer teaching, but would seem to open the door to lower standards. Any expansion in this area would seem to undermine College’s assertions that esteemed senior academics are appointed at least in part to give undergraduate students the best teaching experience.
There are, however, some incentives to hire contract lecturers with postgraduate degrees. Only those with such qualification can be used as module co-ordinators or appointed examiners.
In the course of researching this story, the paper spoke to some of those hired as contract lecturers to do replacement teaching. While their disciplines varied, it was possible to average the cost they were being paid per module to around €3,000.
This merits contrast with the yearly salaries of the Professors (€108 – 138k), Associate Professors (€79 – 105k) or Senior Lecturers (€70 – 89k) who they may be asked to replace.
Academic contracts in Trinity College are not specifically broken down by task. Older contracts can be as little as three lines long. Newer contracts are more detailed but no division of workload is established.
However, a notional division of tasks was articulated by Ned Costello, CEO of the Irish Universities’ Association at a September 23rd, 2010, meeting of the Oireachtas Public Accounts Committee.
In a discussion with Roisín Shortall, T.D., about pay for academic staff he outlined a theoretical breakdown of forty per cent teaching, forty per cent research and twenty per cent administration.
Unions that represent academics have strongly resisted a formalised breakdown of tasks in a workload model, but it provides a certain basis for comparison. If we accept that the €3,000 per module model includes some administration, the lowest-paid Professor would have to teach eighteen modules a year to earn his salary. This would more closely resemble the hours of a second-level teacher and be before any consideration of research.
The apparent disparity here is continued when the issue is viewed through the lens of an undergraduate student. Repeat fees vary by course, the lowest fee-bracket, Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, is €4,191 after the Student Service Charge is deducted. Taking that and dividing it by twelve modules in a year, we can see that those students pay in the region of €350 per module.
If there were one hundred students in a module class, and some exceed that amount substantially, the pool of money gained from the student body would be €35,000. Contract or temporary lecturers could get less than a tenth of that money to teach the module.
Lecturers can also be placed on temporary contract to teach modules in the first semester. Given that Trinity College operates a semi-semesterised system, where two semesters exist but examinations are held only at the end of College year, it is possible that these staff will not be in place at that time. Staff on temporary contracts could be offered positions in universities outside Ireland and may not be in the country when these examinations take place.
But most worrying of all is that academic sources revealed to The University Times the existence of senior figures who engage in little or no undergraduate teaching. This seems to be occurring to a much greater degree than previously, with one source estimating that “more than 20%” now saw no undergraduate teaching hours at all.
It has been the opinion of College that academics who engage in research are in turn better qualified to teach undergraduates. This belief has widespread support across the international academic community. However, there is also recognition of a “tipping point”. This envisages a scenario wherein the more research the academic conducts, the better teacher they become. This is true up until the point where their research severely limits their undergraduate teaching or prevents it from happening entirely.
A good indicator of the path that the university is pursuing in this regard would be to look at the institutions higher up the league tables which it hopes to emulate. In many of the Ivy League institutions in the U.S.A., the highest-paid, top academics teach only the most minimal amount of classes. Their jobs consist almost entirely of engaging in research.
Tellingly, student satisfaction surveys in those Colleges paint a consistent picture of disillusionment among the student body. Many students see the most renowned and highest-paid academics in their institutions only a handful of times before they graduate.
This is mitigated somewhat by polls of those students. These clearly show emphasis being placed on receipt of a degree from a prestigious university rather than quality of education they receive.
It is unclear whether College will see such a shift towards research in its top academics, or to what extent the practice of replacement teaching will increase. It is, however, clear that there are a number of concerns for undergraduates. Coming on the back of the release by this paper last week of an academic survey which showed that staff believed there was “less time for teaching and research” in a more bureaucratic system, it’s clear that this is an issue that must be addressed.
