Elephant in the room

THE question of who should pay for third level education has been an elephant in the room of politics for most of a decade — but never so much as it is in our current economic doldrums.

For a system that our political leaders wish to accommodate almost three-in-four school leavers, our higher education colleges are vastly underfunded. With cuts to their non-pay budget of 5% already pencilled in for 2011 and more likely after Tuesday’s budget, the questions of who should pay, in what proportion, and what quality of education they should expect have never been so pertinent.

The responses around this issue in the Irish Examiner/Millward Brown Lansdowne national opinion poll make clear there is very little support for any increase in college registration fees. Only 4% of participants consider it the fairest of a range of options which is fewer than those who would rather see a property tax introduced (11%) or the minimum wage being cut (7%), and barely more than the 3% who would opt for cuts to old age pensions, with the strongest opposition to raising fees in 18 to 24-year-olds.