Academics need more rigorous performance review

Teaching Matters: When Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, meets next month with the universities and the institutes of technology to explore ways of implementing the OECD Report, their first priority should be to reform the way our third-level system approaches the issue of people.

While it is true that achieving the world-class status that we seek must involve what the OECD describes as a "quantum leap" in spending, and it is equally true that a necessary condition of reaching that status is the kind of organisational change that is at present convulsing some of the universities, neither of these factors on their own will be enough to effect the change we need.

World-class status depends overwhelmingly on the calibre of the academics working in the system. Without the best people, money and organisational models are powerless. And the key fact we must realise is that the system we have now puts barriers in the way of recruiting and developing the highest-calibre people at third-level in Ireland. Unless we recognise this, and make a determined effort to fix it, the project to become world-class is doomed.

One of my first projects following my retirement as president of Dublin City University was a research study into what makes universities great. What emerged as the most striking and consistent feature was the emphasis that great universities put on the quality of academic staff. They headhunted the very best, wherever they were in the world, and that attitude prevails today. But more important for our purposes is the nature of their tenure system - the process by which academics are assessed for permanent positions. It runs for some five to seven years and academics are rigorously assessed each year.

And even when you gain tenure under these conditions, the annual assessment continues. For instance, in the University of California at Berkeley this assessment is carried out by a committee of academics and it is withering. The outcome is to award a salary increase of varying amounts, depending on the person's success; some may not get any increase and they usually take the hint and leave.

In great universities academics in one department want to see that colleagues are as highly respected and are achieving as much as they are. They know that a world-class university must have world-class departments throughout the university - not merely in a small number of departments. They also know that their achievements and standing will be enhanced or reduced by the achievements or otherwise of their colleagues in other departments.

And this is why universities of the standing of UC Berkeley can rely on the academic management (deans and heads of departments) of the university to implement a demanding performance review of their academic colleagues every year.

We lack that process and that rigour throughout the Irish university system. Without it, it is doubtful that any Irish university will ever achieve true world-class status.

In stark contrast to the best-practice approach, tenure in Irish universities is achieved after one year with little assessment. This has two direct consequences. One is that such a brief and cursory assessment is unlikely to identify the best people in the first place. The second is that once people are given tenure, the ability to further incentivise them and to encourage the development of the highest standards is removed. Directly flowing from this system are the main academic flaws in Irish third-level institutions today:

The low-level of research-active academics. In the OECD's own words: "a significant proportion of university staff are not research active and will need supplementation by a new generation of doctoral students".

The low levels of teaching skills, based on the false assumption that if you can write a decent research paper you are thereby automatically qualified to teach and need no further training.

The amateurish approach to student assessment, where, too often, grading defies sound education research regarding the accuracy of marking.

This is why the OECD Report highlighted the existing tenure system as a barrier to excellence that must be reformed as a condition of moving towards world-class status. As they put it: "Human resource policies that reward excellence and discourage lack of performance must be reinforced".

This fits in with a conversation I had with a senior academic at Cornell University who is British and was educated and taught in UK Universities. I asked him what would be the most important change he would make to the UK/Irish university system to enhance the quality of those universities. His response was immediate and clear: "I would change the tenure system".

It is to be hoped that Minister Hanafin's "summit" next month will recognise and squarely confront these quality issues.

The talk that I have heard that there is to be a competition between universities on funding for change programmes - modelled on the PRTLI research assessment exercise - is wrong-headed. What is needed is a shared understanding of what is required as elements of a rational change programme and how such programmes can be funded in each university; for all universities need to change. There is plenty of knowledge internationally of what to do - their successes and failures are well documented - so we can pick the most effective elements.

This will certainly cost money. An example close to hand is Queen's University Belfast, where some 100 academics who had been identified as not being research active or sufficiently research active were given early retirement packages and a new group of research-active academics recruited to replace them. The total cost was €35 million.

But this is the kind of price we have to be ready to pay on the road to becoming world-class.

Danny O'Hare is a former president of Dublin City University