Seanad debates

Wednesday, 28 January 2015

Universities (Development and Innovation) (Amendment) Bill 2015: Second Stage

 

3:45 pm

Photo of Feargal QuinnFeargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I am delighted she is in the House to deal with this Bill and that it is receiving the attention it deserves. Senator Barrett's Bill deserves our support. This is not legislation proposed by a politician. Rather, it is legislation from someone who has been at the coalface in this area for many years and knows exactly what he is talking about. On that basis, it merits support.
For the past three or four years I have been involved with an organisation called Springboard, which through State funding, identifies areas of education into which people who graduated with construction-related degrees, including architects, quantity surveyors and so on, but have not secured employment in that area, can move. One of the things we discovered during the past couple of years is that universities do not follow up on how successful or otherwise their graduates have been, including whether they secured employment in their chosen field. While one or two of our universities do collate this information, in general Irish universities do not track their graduates or collate or analyse this information. The dispersal of information on how many history graduates had secured employment and the fact that there are currently 5,000 vacancies in the IT area would be helpful.
Senator Barrett's overall aim to try to reform the university sector within some existing confines is best summed up by the following words, written last year by him:

I'm a firm believer in the idea that the university sector is over-managed and in many ways misguided by money, government quangos and limited time initiatives that sap energy, funds and people from the main business of a university - educating people and creating knowledge.
Does Senator Barrett recall writing that?

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