An external review of the School of Computer Science and Statistics has described the school as operating in a “financial haze” and that the school’s Strategic Plan 2014-2019 “lacks clear intellectual vision”.
The review was carried at out by three experts from Imperial College London, Columbia University and Nottingham University Business School. Their review, seen by The University Times, was completed in February, and submitted to University Council on June 8th along with a response from the Head of School, Prof Jeremy Jones, and a second response from the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Maths and Science, Prof Vinny Cahill, responding to the reviewers findings and “respectfully” disagreeing with several of their observations.
One of the key concerns raised by the report was that “the School operates in a financial haze with little clear sense of the financial implications of decisions”. It went on to express the view that the current funding model brings “responsibility without autonomy”.
The harshest criticism made by the reviewers in the report was their belief that the school and the school’s strategic plan “lacks a clear intellectual vision”, recommending that the plan is put on a “sound intellectual footing” and used as a “guide to key decisions with regard to faculty hiring and educational programming”.
However, the reviewers also criticised the Trinity’s system of funding the various schools across College, stating that “the College financial model that the school sees is not transparent”. They added that such a funding system had left the School of Computer Science and Statistics in a position where “rational and effective planning in this environment is impossible”.
The review recommends that the school comes to a financial agreement with College “that affords the school some degree of visibility into and control over its financial future”, explaining that under similar models in other universities “both the schools and the universities benefit; without it, decisions are made on guesswork and can be driven by perverse incentives”.
Cahill rejected the comment that the school’s strategic plan lacked “intellectual vision” in his response to the review submitted to University Council in June: “It is unfortunate that the reviewers seem not to have understood the ‘intellectual’ basis of the School’s strategic plan.”
In an interview with The University Times, Jones said that the criticism of the school’s vision was “really a terrible comment to make”, adding that it was “like a knife in the stomach, and it really hit home”. Jones acknowledged, however, that the reviewers’ criticism may, in part, be because the strategic plan did not articulate its intellectual vision clearly enough. Cahill, in his submitted response to University Council, also agreed with this sentiment but added that “it is clear that the school has a clear intellectual vision that underpins its strategic plan and that has guided the decisions that have been made”.
“We are acting on it, and in our response, we accept that we have not articulated our intellectual vision in the plan, but we are pointing out that there was one”, explained Jones, adding that they have updated the strategic plan in response to the criticism.
Jones rejected the use of the phrase “financial haze” by the reviewers, saying that the school “can actually understand the system, but there are a number of issues”. One of these issues is that the school is operating on a zero non-pay budget.
A zero non-pay budget means that the College does not supply the school with any budget outside what is required to pay permanent staff. According to Jones, the school would typically need €650,000 annually to run the school, outside of pay for permanent staff.
Non-pay budgets typically cover the cost of things like photocopying or equipment or any other expenditure outside of staff salaries. The majority of the School of Computer Science and Statistics’ non-pay budget would be spent on demonstrators and teaching assistants.
Jones went on to say that now their non-pay budget comes from the fees of non-EU students that come to study in the school, either as an undergraduate or as a postgraduate.
The College introduced a non-EU incentivisation scheme to get schools and departments within Trinity to boost the number of non-EU students they bring in. This means that once a quota of non-EU students entering Trinity is reached, for each additional non-EU student a school brings in, they receive 70 per cent of their fee. Currently the school has a share in the scheme of €400,000.
This still leaves the school short approximately €250,000 to run the school. As part of their Strategic Plan 2014-2019, they hope to increase the number of non-EU students they bring in: “The thing you don’t realise is, non-EU students are going to be very important for the College because they are going to pay for the day-to-day running of the place.”
In an interview with The University Times, Dr Mike Brady, Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning in the school, commented on the issue of zero non-pay budgets: “There is no doubt that the overall financial situation in third-level institutions has disimproved since the financial crash. There is no question about that.” Commenting on the lack of a non-pay budget from College, Brady said: “The College have had to balance their budget and this one way of doing it.”
The report also highlighted another area of concern in relation to current space used by the school: “The scattering of the School over numerous sites is far from ideal, creating inefficiency, undermining collegiality and detracting from the educational experience.”
As a result, the reviewers welcomed the idea of the Engineering, Energy and Environment (E3) Institute that would bring the school together in one place, along with the School of Engineering and the School of Natural Sciences, and urged the school to “focus on securing a lead role in the E3 project”.
However, Jones stated that E3 will not be an off-site campus for the three schools, but in fact two separate buildings – a teaching building on campus at the site of the old biochemistry labs near the Lincoln Place entrance and an offsite facility in at the Trinity Technology and Enterprise Campus on Pearse St.
When asked whether this new plan now means the school is not addressing the concern raised by the reviewers of fragmented spaces and only addressing the lack of space the school has, Jones responded saying that he agreed with the reviewers, but “many schools are spread out among different buildings”.
“As computer scientists, we would like to be as close together as possible. I suppose from my perspective, being pragmatic about it, we need space”, he added.
Responding to the same question, Brady said: “Trinity campus itself is quite compact, so we are accustomed to the idea of having our offices relatively close to one another by standards of other universities, and we would like to keep it like that, but we have to be pragmatic. We badly need the space.”
The review did note that the school is “in good shape”, acknowledging that the majority of staff in the school are research active, the school’s “outstanding success” in attracting external funding and that the school’s educational programme is attracting many applicants.
The reviewers also praised the school for the “rationalising the postgraduate offerings”. Jones said the decision to streamline the MSc in computer science, reducing the offerings down into four strands, was to attract more students to the postgraduate course, including non-EU students, and to bring modules “that are aligned with the research expertise we have in the school”.
One issue that was raised repeatedly throughout the review was the fact that the position of Chair of Statistics had not been filled by the school. Jones remarked that the reviewers opinion helped push to the College to grant the school permission to fill this vacancy.
