Support students with disabilities

WE welcome Dr Murphy’s views as reported in your newspaper recently and agree with his concerns about the impact on student experience of diminishing resources and staff shortages in higher education.

UCC has a sterling record in promoting access for students with disability and demonstrates excellence in its implementation of support services, so we are deeply disappointed with the assumptions being made about the ability of students with disabilities in his talk.

To paraphrase, he suggests that educating and supporting students with disabilities is a costly exercise that we can’t afford in the current climate as it steals from resources available to the talented 5% of top academic students who the country needs in order to be creative and build our future.

These views expose what Dr Murphy and indeed many others in education really think and reveal the assumptions that lie behind the mask of equality. The assumption is that students with disability are less able than other students and are not expected to be found amongst the 5% of gifted students in higher education.

This assumption is simply wrong. Students with disabilities through their own hard work are demonstrating their diversity of talent, creativity, problem solving and spatial and lateral thinking that are exactly what is needed to deal with the rapidly changing world. The list of high achievers who have a disability is endless and includes people like Mark Zuckerburg, Einstein, John Lennon, John F Kennedy and many more. According to UCC’s own research, students with disabilities are outperforming other students in many areas. Now that they finally have the opportunity to go to college, they are embracing the experience and achieving the same levels of first-class degrees as other students.

AHEAD research shows that the participation rates of students with disability in higher education has increased over the past 10 years from 1.4% of the student population to 3.8%, over 6,800 students, yet they are grossly under-represented by international standards, which are 7%-12%. Let’s remember these students have experienced huge inequalities in education and there is an additional cost of supporting them. The fund for students with disabilities recognises the disadvantage of disability and provides the college with additional funding required. In fact, UCC has received millions of euro over the years to support students with disabilities and these students have done exceptionally well. The cost of not supporting these students is far too high in terms of the loss of talent to the country and the bad economics of keeping people on disability allowance and poverty. The real shame, though, is assuming that brilliance is only found amongst the elite cadre of students who have come up through the in the traditional routes to higher education.

The difficulty is not about allocating the resources to one group at the expense of the other, it is not about stealing from Peter to pay Paul, but about ensuring that as a country we develop the all the diversity of human capital available across the whole community.

Ann Heelan

AHEAD

East Hall

UCD

Blackrock, Co Dublin