Sir, - All parents feel a mixture of hope, fear and trepidation when their beloved child leaves home to take up a place in third-level education. However, my disillusionment with the "restructuring" taking place in Queen's University, Belfast made the recent delivery of my daughter to my old alma mater even more difficult. As a graduate and more recently a post-graduate of Queen's, I had the expectation that my daughter would receive the same excellent standard of teaching as I did there. That hope has faded as I have followed with increasing disquiet the impact of Vice-Chancellor Bain's restructuring proposals, in which 107 academics have been targeted to lose their jobs. This decision has been made purely on the basis that they are deemed not to meet criteria for performance in research. No recognition has been given to their huge contribution in their teaching and pastoral roles.
With his background in industrial relations, Prof Bain is applying the language of commerce to a university. Queen's management under Prof Bain has fallen into the late 20th-century maniacal insistence on short-term gain rather than attention to the long-term needs of students and the community. The status of the university in international research circles has been given priority over the need to provide students with a sound educational basis for their future careers.
I now see my daughter starting her third-level education in a university in which there is an air of uncertainty and falling morale among staff. This is worrying for all parents given that the life and quality of any university depend equally upon the scholarship, teaching, research and morale of the academic staff.
Academics as a body do not have a background in industrial relations with the inherent spindoctor public relations techniques that Prof Bain has brought from his background there. Your newspaper has uncritically given him a platform to justify his actions (Education and Living, Sept 15th).
What is happening in Queen's at present is unnecessarily destructive for the institution and the community as well as for individual students. As with all parents, my main concern is for my own child, that she should receive the best possible teaching to enable her to face the 21st century. Unfortunately, the Thatcherite philosophy of Prof Bain mitigates against this. - Yours, etc.,
Olive Travers,
Donegal Road,
Ballyshannon,
Co Donegal.