Oisín Gilmore

The An Clogán website is (finally) live!!!

Please check it out and consider subscribing to the magazine!

A screenshot of the An Clogán website

The An Clogán website is now live! 🔔

anclogan.ie

Log on to read open-access articles...

... subscribe for more!

Go on and take a look 😉

Come to our wee Belfast book launch.

This Saturday at 1pm!

I love saying "wee".

fb.me/e/7Ja4BlPwZ

I've a feeling I've seen similar findings for Europe. But I could be wrong. The data for working this out should be here anyway. If you wanted to go digging.

www.timeuse.org

Today is too late for the launch, but the nice thing about books is that they're available afterwards. Buy this one!

Packed house in The Teacher's Club for launch of David Landy and @oisingilmore.bsky.social new book on the contemporary Irish Left - 'Fragments of Victory'. So many familiar faces!

'Fragments of Victory: The Contemporary Irish Left' edited by @oisingilmore.bsky.social and @david-landy.bsky.social and published by Pluto Press. I have coauthored a chapter in it on the Irish Repeal referendum, focused on the activism of the Abortion Rights Campaign. #abortion #sociology

Very interesting thread. 🧵

It contains chapters covering anti-austerity struggles 2008-13, water charges, repeal, housing struggles, trade unions, the centre left, anarchism, Trotskyism and republicanism.

Huge thanks to everyone who has helped out with this project!

The book includes writing from Dave Gibney, Aileen, Máire Ni Chuagáin, Juliana Sassi, Seamus Farrell, Rosi Leonard, Aisling Hedderman, Mary Muldowney, Paul Dillon, Kevin Doyle, Dan Finn, Stewart Reddin and Damian Lawlor.

Book cover of 'Fragments of Victory'

Hold the date: Book launch on February 6th!

‘Fragments of Victory: The Contemporary Irish Left’, which I co-edited this with David Landy, is forthcoming from Pluto Press in January 2025 and is available to pre-order now.

www.plutobooks.com/978074534875...

I doubt that's it, as any lay person can perform a baptism. This is only supposed to happen when clergy are unable to perform a baptism (ex. if an unbaptised child is close to death). But, regardless, it's already accepted that lay people can perform a sacrament.

The irony of the neoliberal dispensation in a academia is the refusal to apply something like a cost-benefit analysis to competition itself

Oh that's very interesting. I'd never even heard of a Department of Campus Life before. That sounds bizarre!

I think what really drives innovation is competition over cost, where firms are compelled to find ways of increasing productivity per hour worked. And I think looking at that is where you are more likely to find explanations for slow down in productivity growth.

And that aligns with what universities, including the economists and academics advising policy makers want: more money for their institutions. Happy economists.

But was the evidence really there that investing in universities leads to higher innovation? I think the evidence was really fairly weak.

There's a large consensus amongst economists that what drives growth is "innovation"/TFP not capital deepening. So, how do you increase "innovation"? Well, an easy answer for policy makers is "invest in universities". Box ticked. Happy policy makers.

On the productivity growth story... I don't really believe the idea that there ever was a simple causal link where increased university research lead to increased productivity growth. I'd like if that story was true, but I think its a simple story that serves a neat coincidence of wants:

I really think, relative to the things I've listed above, almost no-one is employed in "improving the “student experience”". And in all the flurry of literature around this, the stats I've seen have always been these aggregated stats that don't really show what they claim to be showing.

Now, some of that is also going to be picked up in this "other professionals" category, but I suspect the growth in this category is to a large degree the growth is part-time faculty. Some of the growth is going to be things like a growth in medical services on campus. But apart from that....

I suspect a lot of the growth in the admin staff faculty is growth in things like IT services, and in STEM, where you have a large growth in non-academic lab technicians employed in universities etc, and growth in staffing in things like fundraising and alumni relations etc.

So, on the administration story. You often see figures like this that show a growth in staff focused "more on improving the “student experience”". Now, I've only worked in European universities, so maybe its different over the pond, but I don't really see this on the ground in Europe.

Well, when I say "I think the thread is wrong", I mean more "I suspect its wrong" than "I am sure its wrong". But, I suspect there are two things wrong. Firstly, on the university administration story, and secondly on the productivity growth story.

I think this thread is wrong in a number of ways, but it's still an interesting idea.

I assume NWW=North, Wallis and Weingast. Is that right?

left: Nicolas Cage with long black hair and a moustache in a black top right: Spinoza with long black hair and a moustache in a black top

a short thread of Nicolas Cage resembling various philosophers

1. Spinoza

RIP H.S. (1922 - 2024),
you will be dearly missed...

libcom.org/tags/henri-s...

This is so sad. Henri was one of the most incredible men I've ever met, and it was an honour to know him and consider him a comrade.

New auto-enrolment pension scheme could make gender gap even worse, report warns A new pension scheme for 750,000 workers could make a 35pc gap between men and women’s retirement incomes even worse, a report has warned.

A good article by Anne Marie Walsh in the @irishindependent.bsky.social about my report on pension auto-enrolment, gender and care launched today with the National Women's Council @nwc.bsky.social