“Dumbing down” at third and second levels
Search giant Google has said it cannot find suitably qualified staff in Ireland because of “dumbing down” in the education system.
Figures for Google Ireland, based in Barrow Street in Dublin, show that the firm hired almost 500 extra staff in Ireland in 2007, bringing total staff in Dublin to 1,167. The company has since boosted its Irish staff numbers to about 1,500.
According to the firm’s accounts, ‘‘the company operates a top-class facility in Dublin and believes that it attracts the best and brightest people’’.
However, John Herlihy, the head of the Barrow Street operation and a director of Google Ireland, said the Dublin base had lost out on jobs because the company could not find suitably qualified software engineers. He said that Google had expanded its software engineering teams in Poland, Norway and Switzerland at Ireland’s expense.
‘‘We hear a lot about this knowledge economy of ours. But. . . I still don’t know what it is,” Herlihy said.
‘‘I’m not sure the quality and output of our third-level is as good as we think it is. There’s a huge amount of dumbing down at third-level and second-level.”
Google Ireland attributed its €2 billion rise in revenues in 2007 to new contracts, growth in the advertising market, and ‘‘the continued emphasis on developing the business in the European market’’.
But despite the massive increase in revenues, the Dublin firm made an operating loss of €16.7 million in 2007 because of rising administrative expenses and cost of sales. The company spent €18.5 million on research and development and had payroll costs of €92.9 million, including €13.2 million in ‘‘share-based payments’’. (Source: Sunday Business Post)
January 15th, 2009 at 10:04 am
At last somebody has pointed to the emperor with no clothes. While I would disagree about the quality of second level education, I do agree that there are some pretty low standards in some parts of our third level educational system. The problem is that the wrong skills are looked for and assessed. We cannot have over 60% of our 18 year olds going to academic third level institutions unless they dumb down. They will be penalised for not meeting student retention targets, so guess what the incentives are?
January 15th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Other european countries have a bigger participation rate than ireland. Are they also dumbed down or do they just have a bigger subsequent drop-out rate?