Third-level funding - Fees must not exclude anyone
We all recognise the absolute importance of these institutions and we depend on them to educate the people who will sustain and run this society in the not-so-distant future.
Yesterday, Fine Gael threw their hat in the ring by proposing a funding system that would see students pay 30% of the cost of their courses once they had graduated and had begun working.
They have proposed a tax which would be paid for 10 years once students have graduated and that registration charges, which are set to rise to e1,500 later this year, be abolished.
Though the phrase “30% of the cost of their courses” leaves a lot of wriggle room, it is a recognition that some sort of levy will have to be imposed no matter how it is done. It, however, might have been better if they suggested that fees be paid on enrolment, even if a student loan was the source of the money.
Fine Gael says the proposals would raise e500 million per year for colleges and universities.
Whether this would be enough to satisfy the university presidents who warned that “unless fees for all were reintroduced, Irish universities would face a disaster within two years” remains to be seen.
Speaking before the scale of our current crisis had fully revealed itself, Dublin City University president Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynksi warned that universities had lost 30% of their income per student in real terms. At present trends “show a further 12% would be lost over the next two years. But if further cuts were imposed, this could rise to 30% which would be disastrous for the universities”.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist of even modest capabilities to see that those figures don’t add up and that something has to change in the way we fund third-level education.
Like it or not, there are also credibility issues.
The Higher Education Authority’s chief executive Tom Boland pointed out recently that, in the universities, the proportion of students acquiring at least a 2.1 degree rose from 54% in 2001 to 62% in 2007. This remarkable improvement was matched by a drop of on average 40 entry points. There are two possible conclusions, he suggested. Either the figures show exceptional progress in teaching and learning capacities, even though the students have registered lower academic achievements than were required previously. Yet they achieve better results.
Alternatively, the figures point to grade inflation on a scale which threatens the reputation of the entire system. We all know the cost of a lost national reputation and how damaging such a loss can be.
We also know that we have bet the family silver on the establishment of a “knowledge economy”. Properly funded third-level institutions with universal access are central to this. The objective must be the best possible colleges and institutes, and that no one with the required academic standards be excluded no matter what their resources. It is hard to see how this can be achieved without the reintroduction of fees, especially in these straitened times.
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