University heads are in denial
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IN a world in which the rich suddenly become less rich and the poor grow ever poorer, the glittering prizes available to the people who run our universities seem quite extraordinary.
The €1.1m that the University of Limerick has spent, so far, on a luxurious new home for its president casts a whole new light on the world of academia.
Now we know what those spires were dreaming about all along.
Meanwhile, the country's seven university heads, who between them receive a total of more than €1.6m a year, deny that the Minister for Education ever asked them to accept a salary cut.
This despite Batt O'Keeffe's public exhortation to them to do so "in the national interest".
Instead, when seeking a 55pc increase to raise their salaries above €300,000, the university heads claimed that their performances match those of chief executives in major corporations, and cited their "mental horse power", their emotional intelligence and their "street smart, problem-solving skills". In fairness, they never claimed to be modest.
With such remarkable resources, it must have come as some small embarrassment to the college CEOs to have to admit, at long last, that student registration charges are really fees by the back door, that some of the income is being diverted into library costs, and, in the case of TCD, even "animal testing", a revelation that is sure to infuriate some of that college's students.
The minister has argued that there is nothing new in the revelation that registration charges are fees by another name and, in truth, it has always been an open secret.
However, it smacks of creative accounting at best.
As one student leader put it: "The fact that universities are categorising core facilities as student services is farcical."
The relative silence of academics in the life of the country, as discussed by Kevin Myers today, is one thing, but the tacit acceptance of such "open secrets" by the people at the top, is another. At a time when third-level education institutions are under scrutiny, when redundancies in the sector are on the way and the reintroduction of college tuition fees is a distinct possibility, the extraordinary pay, privileges and comforts of a few at the top are bound to attract attention.
Irish Independent
