BRIAN LUCEY,
Sir, - your correspondent , Dr Lalor of the DIT (August 17th) implies that the differential benchmarking awards as between institutes of technology and university academics is justifiable on the grounds that both groups do the same non-teaching work and that IT lecturers teach a multiple of the weekly hours of university lecturers.
Unfortunately, this is not a full reflection of the differences. Dr Lalor asserts that IT academics are involved in research in all its guises. This is true.
However, the "gold standard" of academic reserarch is publication of the results in internationally respected, peer-reviewed, journals.
I am not competent to comment on any area of academic research but my own, and in that (financial economics) there is scant evidence of such "gold standard" research output.
In my view, this is not the outcome of poorer quality staff, but a direct reflection of the fact that by and large IT academics do have a substantial teaching load and thus are unable to put by substantial contiguous blocks of time to undertake the volume and type of research required to produce "gold standard".
If it accepted that the creation of high-quality research is a fundamental prerequisite for the advancement of our society and economy, perhaps instead of penalising those that produce relatively more, the benchmarking body might have considered otherwise. However, we shall never know. - Yours, etc.,
BRIAN LUCEY, School of Business, Trinity College, Dublin