Horrible title for a post, but it just fell out. I regret nothing. In the Sunday Business Post, Drs. Charles Larkin and Jacco Thijssen of TCD put forward recommendations for restructuring innovation policies and education spending Their research is put out through the swangroup.
Link to the swangroup, via Liam at the Geary Behaviour Centre Blog.
I've got more to say on the education-funding issue, and I'll put those thoughts up in a few days.
Best quote of Charlie and Jacco's article:
The drive to create a knowledge economy also requires money to be spent in a strategic way. If, given our current economic difficulties, there must be cuts in the education sector (and those cuts do not change the population of Marlborough Street) it must be made clear that cuts made at the primary and secondary level have a deeper economic and social impact than at any other level.
Research conducted by Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman has made it clear that the majority of cognitive and non-cognitive skills necessary for participation in economic activity are largely acquired by the age of 12 and that investment and social and educational interventions should be at their highest prior to that age.
What is the importance of this debate on the matter of the Irish ‘knowledge economy’ and economic resilience? The government and the many agencies that are involved in education and innovation, by focusing too much on risk and not on ambiguity, have incentivised the education sector to produce and become, in the case of higher education, what economists call ‘rent-seekers’.
The Irish education system at the moment is entirely skewed in such a manner, where students seek to maximise points at the cost of choosing subjects of interest or truly understanding the discipline.
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