Madam, – Paddy Healy (March 29th) seems to think that third-level contract researchers are entitled to career paths into academia.
This is a serious misinterpretation on the part of Mr Healy. The Irish taxpayer is not investing in developing public research in order to create a new generation of academics. The investment is being made in order to produce highly skilled people capable of leading Irish tech business into the future. People should not enter the PhD or post-doc programmes at our third-level institutions if they are merely interested in getting a permanent job in academia.
PhD and postdoc research is a great opportunity for young, enthusiastic technical graduates to access state-of-the-art facilities and learned scholars in our universities. It lasts for a certain period of time and then the graduates are expected to move on. In essence, it is an advanced degree and no more. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Paddy Healy (March 29th) correctly highlights the lack of employment security for postdoctoral researchers in Irish universities. If anything he is too charitable to policy-makers and funding agencies which share the responsibility for the endemic insecurity affecting postdoctoral staff.
A generation of PhD graduates faces unemployment due to the failures and contradictions of official policy. A short period of intense investment in research (which included a government strategy to double the number of PhD graduates) has been followed by a severe contraction of exchequer research funding. This stop-start approach to research funding has led to the emergence of a large cohort of postdoctoral researchers on short-term contracts, who have very limited opportunities in Ireland. No Irish university has created a viable career path for postdoctoral researchers and well-qualified graduates would clearly have better prospects in many other professions.
Insecurity is the only certainty for this group of third-level staff. Such researchers depend entirely on external funding and are frequently not even guaranteed a job if they raise the money for their own contract. Projections based on funding cuts predict a loss of up to 60 per cent of postdoctoral research positions in Trinity College Dublin over the next four years and similar job losses are likely in other universities.
The Higher Education Authority has significantly worsened the problem by extending the Employment Control Framework to externally funded staff. As such staff can only be employed when they secure external funding in any event, this move is pointless and counter-productive to the declared objective of creating a “smart economy”.
The HEA appears to believe that it can have high-quality research without taking any responsibility for the fair treatment of researchers. It should be no surprise when high-quality Irish graduates vote with their feet and find employment in other European states with more attractive and equitable working conditions for postdoctoral research staff. – Yours, etc,
Madam, – Desmond Fitzgerald appears rather uncomfortable hearing the truth about UCD (March 30th), brought to the public forum by Paddy Healy’s letter (March 29th).
As a former employee of UCD who secured numerous grants, including international Wellcome Trust funding, but who fell victim to the very issues raised by Mr Healy, I applaud him for raising these matters, which all too often fall on deaf ears. Perhaps having to consider the damage UCD does to researchers’ careers has distracted Dr Fitzgerald from counting his enormous salary and bonuses? – Yours, etc,