We need your help now
Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.
You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.
If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.
Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
By continuing, you are indicating that you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
THE HIGHER EDUCATION Authority has distanced itself from the policy of board member Paddy Cosgrave whose The Summit event has been the subject of criticism for new employment policies.
The Summit announced this morning that it is hiring 40 new positions, but the minimum grade requirement for applicants is different depending where they achieved their degree.
Cosgrave was appointed to the board of the HEA by the Government but a spokesman for the authority today said that the hiring policies do not reflect the views of the authority.
“Different employers look for different things, he’s perfectly entitled to seek who ever he wants. But third level college graduates should expect to be level of equality in their qualifications.”
The HEA spokesperson adds the awarding of grades is purely the responsibility of third-level institutions themselves.
But the HEA insists that the response it has received from employers indicates that there is “no evidence” to show that a grade in one university is worth less than a similar grade elsewhere.
“The awarding of a degree shows a particular level of mastery in an area and to assume that one qualification is necessarily better than another qualification, there is certainly no evidence of this,” the said.
The HEA has no role in the accreditation of of university degrees, its role is to allocate public funding for third-level and to offer policy advice on higher education.
The latter function would appear to be the reason Cosgrave was co-opted to the board but some individuals in the HEA have admitted that they were surprised when they heard The Summit’s policy.
Speaking this morning on Newstalk, Cosgrave said that the policy partly reflected the differing number of 2.1 and First level grades that are awarded in different universities.
The Summit’s job advertisement specifically points out that graduates of Institutes of Technology who achieved a BA, BSc or similar, are required to have gone on to also secure a Masters to be considered. The HEA has also rejected that IoT’s should be treated differently:
The Institute of Technology sector has produced tens of thousands of excellent graduates and employment statistics show how successful they have been. Successful businesses also tend to be those based on diversity and recognition of leadership in different areas.
“While academic excellence is extremely important, other achievements while in higher education will also be considered, including work experience, practical skills, involvement in college life,” the HEA conclude.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
There are far smarter ways of filtering them.
Ask them about their EXPERIENCE that matters 100 times more than college. A lot of people change drastically as they go through college and when they get into their later 20s. They’re still basically teenagers until they graduate and have a bit of life experience and then that matures them.
I understand the desire these days to have a quick easy filter, employers have gotten FAR too quick to toss CVs aside…”I DONT HAVE TIME I DONT HAVE TIME” they’re nearly having an anxiety attack while they tell you this as well…look if you want high quality staff..you have to sift through some CVs….calm the f–k down, it’s part of your job…hire a HR manager or hire someone temporary to pluck through them, stop looking for quick fixes if you want a quality team you have to do a quality search.
If you have too narrow criteria you are going to end up with a load of clones each tripping over each other to look at a problem the same way. No diversity, no difference in perspectives just the same boiled sh1tes.
When I’m hiring people down the line I’m going to be much more interested in someone who was not always perfect, who had to overcome some challenges and didn’t get all A’s from the time they were in playschool. People who have to struggle along, who don’t always get everything perfect, those peoples adversity breeds character, perspective and problem solving skills that I want on my team. When someone was picture perfect all the time, never hit a bump and never had to struggle they’re not going to adapt well to an unexpected situations or when they come up against a barrier and they won’t have much in the way of an innovative or imaginative thought process.
Just what I think…
So you know better than HR departments that have been hiring people for decades? I’m fairly sure they know what works best, particularly when they can constantly reassess their methods based on the people they’ve hired. That is why the banks in the UK look at second level education as the best indicator, They want people from the top universities because they have had the best experience with those graduates.
Everyone’s entitled to comment they don’t have to work in the industry or have a degree in each area they are commenting on, but if you’re wondering whats informing my views:
I’ve been working since I was 10 years old with the exception of 3 small gaps my LC year, a little bit in college and when I’ve been sick in the last year. I’ve worked in offices, retail, security, accommodation, university.. I’ve had every type of manager you can imagine, and I’ve friends from various colleges across the social arctypes.
In my experience middle managers, including HR, are not innovators and they don’t try new things or reassess their methods, they are conservative like all bureaucracy’s. In dunnes I told one manager who was complaining that there was no one location where you could get barcodes, style numbers, prices etc that I was making a catalog with all that info in it during the slow shifts, he told me that wasn’t my job…but I didn’t see him solving the problem, so I ignored him and made it anyway…showed some innovation they claimed in meetings they always wanted. He chewed me out for it, then a few weeks later this catalog is known as ”the bible” around the store and he’s telling the story as starting when he mentioned there was no such booklet. My point? The middle manager is a cautious conservative, generally and often makes foolish flippant decisions, these tendency’s are still there when they sift through CVs
Call this what it is, a cheap way to filter candidates so they have to deal with less CVs, a filter that is clearly biased by social perception snobbery.
I’ve been working since I was 6.
sigh…why ca….you can work when your 10/11!, I wasn’t in the coal mines..I worked in local newsagent, doing little bits (the till on sweetcounter, going to c n c, helping with deliverys) with the two guys in their 20s who ran the shop who’d becoming surrogate big brothers. I learned a good work ethic there and their advice helped me in work situations years later. I got first official on books job at 16. I was making a serious point about having experience in the working world to answer your questioning of my capacity to judge these moronic hiring rules. Nobody can work at jack when they’re six, so I assume it was an attempt at humor..go watch some DesBishop clips..take notes. your routine needs work :)
To be honest, I’m annoyed. The Summit guys do good work, I see the results of it at my own job every day with the 100s of tech people flying from/to the States, but to allow the message to go out that ” to work with us you must be one of the club or prove you’re smarter than the riff raff”, that’s not right.
It’s not like you’re *building* anything in a company, where you need the creme de la creme of number crunchers to get your product engineering & customer behaviour analysis spot-on. You’re organising events. That’s it.
If you need to up the standards, up them across the board. If that means turning away alma mater, then turn away your alma f*****g mater. You want people who can do the job. That’s it. If, after you’ve weeded out the lower standards, you need to pick from a large pile, make it a lottery.
Smart people go to University.
Stupid people go to University.
Smart people go to ITs.
Stupid people go to ITs. (*puts hand up* hey, howarya!)
If you want to differentiate candidates by where they went to school
1:You’re a moron, who’s throwing out a lot of babies with the gallons of bathwater.
2: You’re either working under some unbelievably untrue (and more important, unsubstantiated & unproven) prejudices or too lazy to consider doing the legwork of going through the number of candidates a role attracts.
Very well said. Sales roles at end of the day, not complex programming or coding.
This is nothing more than a Trinners complex and cheap publicity. I would imagine they would have had such bias without publicising it in this manner anyway.
All animals are equal…. Some a little more…
Having gone to both an IT and and a university, it’s my own personal experience that ITs are much better at providing hands-on courses and have lecturers who are closer to industry resulting in more capable grads coming out of ITs. But I try my best not to discriminate against uni grads when it comes to hiring.
Better standard of person attends University. Smarter and more diligent.
And you know this as a fact becauuuuuuuuse…………….?
CAO results. My own life experiences. Not many ambitious 18 year olds with 550 points are beating down some ITs doors unless it is some very specific industry related course and they’re a bit naive,
Do you know how good those young people studying medicine in university are? Incredibly smart and committed people,
Okay using the example of medicine is just wrong in this case as only universities provide those courses, so that’s a false analogy.
And what do you know about the ambitions of 18 year olds? Just because someone is adept at rote-learning and does well in the LC doesn’t make them smarter or more diligent than others, it’s simply a way of learning that leaves little in the way of imaginative or critical thinking.
Just because you know some people or think you’re opinion is more informed than others does not make you right Brendan!
*your opinion, sigh!
That B2 in English was for nothing but show… ;)
Amazing how much publicity he has created for the positions within 24 hours noting that this is not a requirement but a preference. Ryanair could not get this publicity.
Brendan I know how easy it can b to base your policy opinions on anecdotal information, I caught myself at it today woman came thru dart turnstyles in station with a DSP pass and I thought wtf could POSSIBLY be her disability? (young perky 20something)
Then reminded myself that cancer didn’t make me look any less fit other than being a bit paler.
Lots of people base their attitudes on it, experience can inform you but you gotta base your ultimate opinions on the data and the science. There’s no data showing a ucd student smarter than a Tallaght IT student or DIT student…there’s just not. You might..and fine Ill concede it, I do,prefer to choose friends from among the types who go to UCD but thats ur own social pref not hard data.
Its a sociological fact of our current society that student x from Springfield Tallaght is gonna find it harder to get to ucd than student z from Foxrock..not cos of brain capacity but factors outside their control (put same student x in Foxrock from age 5 things will flip) odds are actually against him reaching DIT..someone overcomes those obstacles has that kinda drive beats the odds.. gets to DIT..it makes me so angry to see them casually tossed aside before even getting a shot in interview..its not right.
I want that person I want someone who can smash down barriers like that and beat the odds who the hell doesn’t want that person I mean am I the crazy one?
I got my degree in an IT, but got my masters in a university. What does this mean for me?
I would say it suggests that you made a wise decision when it came to postgraduate courses.
Means they might half look at your application.
I was honestly glad to do my undergrad in an IT becausE I didn’t like the snobbery that exists in uni’s, but by the time it came to choosing a postgraduate course, I had evolved to wanting to be one of the elite :-)
Trinners for winners
See Jimminy I don’t think this is really about IT’s v Unis…it’s class snobbery…..the right ‘types’ go to UCD, DCU etc
If there was a University and it had the highest test scores in the entire western world, and 80% graduated with 1.1…but a walk around the campus revealed that instead of tight hollister tshirts, Canterbury bottoms and vans like UCD the populace wore white baggy trakkies and north facing basebal caps and it was University College Tallaght….I don’t think you’d find UCT on this list…somehow…just a sneaking suspicion…
Brilliant
Load of boulderdash if you ask me. If they’re so snobbish about applications I could only imagine what they’ll be like to work for. I obtained my degree from an IT and I’m proud of that fact. I was also offered my course in a Uni but couldn’t afford to uproot everything and in hindsight I’m a lot happier in the route I took.
At the end of the day I’m happy in what I know and how I apply what I learned. I’ve sat in on lectures in universities and found them to be overcrowded and not geared towards the student. Whereas in the IT that I attended, if I had a problem or didn’t understand something I could ask the lecturer and get an answer, because there wasn’t 80 other people trying to get attention.
Totally agree. I mean this summit thing is basically a conference, it’s more project management skills if you ask me.
And I volunteered at the Web summit 2 years back (2012), they really need better project/ event management!
I was part of a group that met international attendees for a quick greet at the airport. We checked their names off a paper list that was also very unorganised!
And the A-list attendees of course got their names checked off a list on a computer though.
…. thats a web summit for you.
This same issue arises in the Accountancy profession where some employers simply “prefer” people from a particular accountancy body – it’s a personal choice and opinion and one has to live with it.
But I don’t think there is any doubt that a degree from TCD is worth a lot more than some obscure qualification from an IT.
ITs are the Aldi/Lidl of what is little more than advanced second level education aren’t they?
Unpopular but true comment. Always wonder why comments which are clearly true get so many red thumbs. The points requirements to get into these courses isn’t just about numbers of places, it’s about the perception about the quality of the qualification, the same perception that employers have.
The reason is that many find it difficult to accept the simple fact that some qualifications are better than others. And, amazingly, some people actually have more ability than others (say that in a school and you will probably get the sack). ITs are for people with less ability. That is why you don’t need high LC points to get on to their (obscure, it has to be said) courses. this sense, they do serve a purpose and are useful in that regard.
The opening post here is symptomatic of the other extreme. Fetishisation of experience over education produces this kind of nonsense about ‘the university of life’.Its the kind of drivel you hear from people like Bill Cullen and is as misleading as any of the generalisations about education in other posts (this one excepted).
Some of these “obscure courses”:
Civil Engineering
Computer Science
Marketing
Business Administration
Architecture
Planning /Enviormental management.
I didn’t mean the titles. I meant the content and the standard
To this day I always tell of a story that epitomises social / educational snobbery in this country…. Back in the day myself and 2 lads applied for the KPMG grad programme. Same college (not a Uni), similar education & backgrounds. One of the lads dropped his application in through a contact in TCD. Guess who got called forward? Yep you guessed it…
The ones who talk about the likes of UCD / TCD being better than other educational institutes are normally the ones trying to justify their own self worth. Absolute social snobbery… Those who fall for same are even bigger gobsh##es.
Couldn’t agree more. Hate when employers say “big 4″ need only apply. Girl I trained with scored highest in Ireland for financial reporting and trained in a small practice wouldn’t get a look in with large multi nationals because she doesn’t have big 4 experience.
Surely there is employment equality issues there. I once tackled a recruitment agency over this and they admitted that ex big 4 tend to what to hire from big 4 gene pool. Snobbier basically. No hope for me now haha.
In addition I graduated from DKIT in accounting and ten years later I am helping a first year undergrad in NUI maynooth as her lecture material on certain topics is very poor in standard.
No issue with employers requesting candidates with honours degrees like what the summit are doing. But don’t think they should dictate the uni it comes from.
Does anybody proof read the articles before they are printed. The irony.
*posted
Indeed. The irony.
It’s incredible isn’t it? I want to complain.. but then I feel like I might be trolling. The lack of proof reading in almost every Journal article is astounding. I’m no English expert, but I can pick up when there’s an extra “for”, or an “a” is out of place. Come on guys!
He seems like such an unlikable person. He set up the worlds largest tech circle jerk. The astronomical price increases in recent years reflect that. Its not about startups or harbouring talent…its about who has the biggest wallet and wants to shell out €1000 for a ticket.
I always wanted to go to the Web Summit in its early days, have no interest anymore. Its all very fake and plastic.
yea i avoid those things myself, can see how they develop, it becomes a business. starts off with low ticket prices, rising further year on year which is bizarre as the crowds grow too. their excuses like, “ah but we have a lot more to organise etc etc” these people have now quite their day jobs and this little cash cow is their full time job for ONE f**** event in the year. Call it greed or creating a job for oneself but we ain’t fools. Avoid like the plaque. The internet has all the news and info you need without feeding them 100s for a ticket.
Absolutely Paudi. Started off as a novel, nobel concept, but it’s all about greed now. I heard a rumour that it netted a profit of €1million two years ago? They charge outrageous ticket prices and land mega bucks corporate funding so maybe that figure is about right.
Meetup.com and Eventbrite are full of niche, much more focussed tech events, definitely the way to go in my opinion.
they ain’t the only ones at it either, a few others i won’t name started 4-5 years ago, now feed off graduates, gimmicks, talks? i don’t want to hear what they have to say for €200, insane. talk talk talk. just do your own thing, granted if they ever ask you to talk about ‘how you made it’ for a few grand – take it but pay €200 to hear it, eh no thanks. graduates with idols might fork it out for the business venture. €200 x 500-1000 attendees, thats some cash for one event. even enough to live on for 2-3 organisers for the year after theyve paid their talkers.
God help anyone who doesn’t have a degree. They condemned themselves to a life on the lowest rungs of the social ladder. There is no excuse in Ireland, considering that grants were so easily attainable
Not really, if everyone had a degree it wouldn’t exactly mean much to have one then, now would it?
You simply have to accept the fact that only a certain % of society is academically oriented in the first pace. I don’t see the point of non-academic people being compelled to take out loans for something they’re not suited for in the first place.
The likes of the Labour party here in the UK have a lot to answer for with their mindset of wanting to send everyone to Uni, to the detriment of many other trades & professions which have now been taken over by cheap imported labour.
Sorry Jimminy but as someone who came from a very not well off background, I have to call BS on the grants are easily available point…it’s just not true.
My college gave me a lot of help with my situation, but the state? I was independent from day 1 of college because I had to be, there was one income, mine, it was zero the second year…it was not a complex application.
I qualified but did not get it until the last 3 weeks of term. I was locked out of the library, blackboard and all learning materials and if it were not for UCD Res hiring me as an RA (which was a different job then and came with free rent and no bills) and a security guy taking pity on me when I was moaping around one night with one meal left in my fridgefreezer and asking his boss if there was a free slot to give me a job, I literally would have ran out of food waiting for my grant, as it stood I went many a day without a meal.
The first year it was quicker but I remember having to walk to college in the p1ssings of rain because I could not afford the bus fare and didn’t yet know anyone on campus who could give me a lift, used to have to look at others zooming by in their cars….grant my arse…
IMO we should abolish up front fees again, weither we do a 0% state loan, graduate top up tax, or something else up front fees should be gone, nobody should be distracted worrying about money when they are trying to educate themselves. Not every student has well off parents to fall back on or their own job.
Ryan, the fact that you walked to lectures with an empty stomach in the pissing rain says a lot more about the kind of person and employee you are than where you studied. Fair play
Your story resonated with me Ryan, not because I had it tough when I was in college. I went to college in a time when the country was awash with money and was lucky to be able to work enough to fend for myself whilst having the rent paid by HQ. I often think if I was 18 yrs old in 2014, what would life be like…. I can only deduce that I’d be on the dole. Simple as. Education is a right not a privilege for the few.
Grade inflation for degree tourists.
The clue is in the leaving cert points.
How is the LC relevant?
Especially for the technology sector, IT, engineering etc. There are no subjects, except for Maths maybe, that would be relevant to these kinds of degrees.
The snobbery in education is surprising considering they are supposed to be educated.
Taught in IOT Cork all my life. Grads work with pharmachem and IT multinationals eg Apple, Pfizer etc. All think very highly of IOT Grads. But what would they know??
I don’t know if it was their intention or a happy coincidence, but the amount of free publicity The Summit is getting from this suggests this is an intentionally controversial stunt.
Paddy needs to resign from the HEA- someone that ignorant and bigoted should not be allowed to govern our higher education system. How can he impartially distribute resources between the different participants when is so obviously trinity first.
sure he thinks his the business.
Perhaps this year with all of the brains they will be hiring….they can A) provide a working WiFi network and B) provide attendees with a paper based schedule of talks with a description of what the talk is about as last year their mobile schedule app didn’t work!!
lots of apps don’t work, they think they do which is even funnier.
Quite obviously if you attain your “degree” from Donald Duck College on Eden Quay or if you go to UCD etc, the trinity one is more preferred. I got a law degree from a night course from a college somewhere in England, I barely attended and it’s in no way the same value as one from Trinity etc
The thing is that while the degrees have equal weight, a first is notoriously difficult to get in trinity, in comparison to other universities where they are more lenient.
I have a first from UCD (degree) and a first from Trinity (MBA). I paid for both and took each as a mature student.
My MBA in TCD covered 20 subjects. The IBAT college MBA covers 8 subjects. In effect these are the same qualifications…. but entirely different standards.
Top uni’s attract smarter students and better lectures. The standards are higher as a result. Using a bell curve of achievement, an average student will be placed much higher in a lower ranked college because s/he’s competing with a different quality of student.
It’s akin to division 1 footballers versus premium league footballers. Some are more talented than others. It’s life.
If only seeing what you did there made one eligible for a job…
Your link is to “Graduate Opportunities” – not entirely holistic is it?
Not sure I follow Paul. My point was that we evaluate on the entire cv, not just the school attended.
Over the last week everyone has been talking about the new graduate screening policy at The Summit. Going by many of the comments on social media, it is fair to say that it has left many people outraged, angry, disappointed and in many cases worried that this could set some new trend or ranking within the IT sector. While any company can decide their own recruitment policy, it was very disappointing that Paddy Cosgrave, who sits on the HEA board, seems to think that most degrees outside of Trinity are three years long. Let’s set the record straight on that. All of our undergraduate Honours Degrees at Level 8 (DT228, DT211 and DT282) are four years in duration.
As a point of information, over the last five years over one thousand DIT School of Computing graduates have successfully entered the workplace, demonstrating almost 100% employment rate, successfully competing with computing graduates across Ireland. DIT School of Computing graduates have found employment with all of the major IT companies in Ireland. Applicants are typically screened based on merit, performance, and experience, in an industry that seeks out talent and offers huge rewards.
The DIT School of Computing constantly seeks to improve all aspects of our courses and are constantly working on our relationship with Industry. At the recent Project Fair 2014, an industry sponsored event, over 200 companies were represented, seeing for themselves the highest level of student projects from our all our degree programmes. This event continues to grow and be a major source of recruitment, student placements and sponsorship. This year we are also establishing the Industry Engagement Office, in order to extend even further the range of activities and cooperation between the IT Industry and ourselves.
Our success is evidenced by the ever growing demand for our courses both nationally and internationally, with increases in our CAO points putting us on par with our university competitors. With yearly successes in undergraduate technology competitions such as the Imagine Cup, Games Fleadh, GosuCoder and of course the Undergraduate Awards which was won by a DIT School of Computing student in 2013.
The HEA has distanced itself from the Summit’s hiring policy, but it must deal with the fact that one of it’s own board members still believes that the majority of degrees outside of Trinity are three years in length. We of course will continue focusing on the quality of our own courses, our partnerships, and enhancing the reputation of our own School for the good of students past, present and future. We also call upon our own Institute, IOTs around the country and especially the IT Industry to reject this notion that we are not all equal. We believe that all computer graduates should have a fair chance to compete for a job based on their own merits which is surely a more sensible approach.
School of Computing
Dublin Institute of Technology
have your say