[…]USI says Government needs a plan to increase this funding by €11.5 million in order to reach safe counsellor to student ratios to combat the mental health crisis currently affecting our young people, including our students. This crisis was shown in the Jigsaw My World 2 survey where 8,290 of those surveyed were students, and of the over 8,000 student respondents, 10 per cent said that they had attempted suicide. Of those who tried to take their own lives, 54 per cent said they tried to get help afterwards, and of those, 48 per cent said they found it ‘difficult/very difficult’ to […]
[…]engage with representative organisations of lecturers and postdoctoral and PhD researchers in order to begin to address this systemic issue. Introduce regulations or legislate to ensure all persons employed to teach in higher education institutions earn a living wage at a minimum. Engage with the Higher Education Authority, universities and higher education institutions, trade unions and other worker representative organisations to develop regulations around the use of fixed-term and part-time contracts and contracts of indefinite duration. Work with relevant stakeholders to develop a tangible plan to end precarity in higher education. Invest in public research and public-public partnerships for research, […]
[…]which I have signed on behalf of USI, calls for all stipends to be increased to €28,000 in order to address inflation, the housing and cost-of-living crises, and in recognition of the new government valuation on PhD-level research as seen in their most recent PhD funding initiative.” The open letter goes on to say that that PhD students feel they are not valued, and some have expressed doubts as to the point of continuing when they could get much better-paid jobs in the industry. Read the full text of the open letter […]
