The Future of the Forestry Sector in Ireland

The most recent government strategy statement on forestry sets a planting target of 20,000 hectares annually for the Republic of Ireland, but in recent years this target has not been met. Public afforestation is now limited to the management and replacement of existing forests, so private afforestation must increase if this target is to be achieved. This article quantifies the relative importance of competing forestry and agricultural policy incentives in explaining trends in private afforestation. Several policy reforms to encourage forestry planting are proposed, including greater integration of forestry with the Rural Environment Protection Scheme and increasing the upfront payments which farmers receive

Determinants of Private Afforestation in the Republic of Ireland

This paper employs a panel regression analysis using county-level data to quantify the relative importance of competing forestry and agricultural policy incentives in explaining trends in private afforestation in Ireland. It concludes that an increase in the level of up front payments to planters is the most cost efficient way of increasing planting levels. The introduction of the Irish agri-environment programme REPS has contributed to a significant decline in the level of forestry planting and offset the recent increases in the level of forestry grants and premia. Several policy reforms to encourage forestry planting in Ireland are proposed, including greater integration of forestry with the REPS scheme and increasing the value of the initial payment which farmers receive.

Household Characteristics of Higher Education Participants

The aim of this paper is to analyse the characteristics of Irish households that have a member participating in higher education, using surveys of Irish households collected in 1994-95 and 1999-2000. The results do not show a significant effect of income; this is notable, especially alongside the strong result that longer-term factors such as household wealth and cultural capital have a significant effect. This lends support to the argument proposed by Heckman (2000) that family income is only important over the entire educational investment cycle of a child. However, the importance of grant eligibility is a notable result, which suggests that short-term financial constraints cannot be dismissed. A combination of suitably beneficial short-term and long-term factors may be important for encouraging participation in higher education.higher education, human capital, credit constraints

Making Use of Open Access and Open Education Resources

As the costs incurred by students for tuition and materials continue to rise, as educators we have a responsibility to ensure that resources used in classwork are accessible to all without causing financial burden. In this session we will cover Open Access and Open Education Resources that can be used in both teaching and research, including Open Access journals, Open Education Textbooks, and institutional repositories such as Montclair State\u27s own Digital Commons, and how these tools can decrease costs for your students

Natural Selection and the Workshop

In Fall of 2017, the Sprague Library began offering workshops for citation management software in response to the increasing number of 1-on-1 appointment requests. While workshops covering various topics had been offered in the past, attendance had been low. Casting this precedent into the wind, we offered additional workshops (using anecdotal evidence from library instruction classes, research appointments, and conversations with faculty to guide the topics), and targeted graduate students and faculty as our audience. Instead of using attendance as a way to measure success, we focus on participant feedback, follow up appointments, and word-of-mouth to advertise the guide topics and scheduling for future events