Irish Examiner view: Education woes will affect us all

Student protests

Students Jennifer Clifford, Grainne Stembridge, Orlaith O'Byrne and Maeve Bartley at the USI student walkout protest at University College  Cork.

October is traditionally the time of year when third-level students flood back to colleges and universities all over the country — ready for study and socialising, growing up and getting on.

The student experience is often seen as a time when those in their late teens and early 20s have yet to come to grips with full adult responsibilities, but recent news suggests a far more fraught experience now than in past decades.

Yesterday, this newspaper reported that Irish universities are to appoint 17 new sexual violence and harassment prevention and response managers; they’re to be tasked with promoting a zero-tolerance culture towards sexual violence on Ireland’s college campuses.

The data supports these appointments: A survey earlier in the year reported 1,100 students describing experiences consistent with the legal description of rape, for instance.

Other challenges were highlighted yesterday also. At 11.11am, students left their lecture halls as part of the national walkout organised by the Union of Students in Ireland to protest against the cost-of-living and accommodation crises, two separate but linked problems.

The difficulties faced by people in all walks of life in securing accommodation have been well aired, and students face a particular issue in that they usually need accommodation for an academic year rather than a full 12 months, limiting their options. The attendant problems of the cost-of-living crisis were well articulated by the University College Cork student who told this newspaper yesterday that it was becoming impossible to get an education and to try and make a life for oneself as a young person.

The idea that third-level education is both prohibitively expensive and fundamentally dangerous is concerning enough, but it also has long-term implications for Irish society as a whole.

If a person’s financial security and physical safety are endangered by attending college, will that person even attend college? And if not, what kind of graduates will we see emerging into the professions instead?