The current model of education funding in Ireland is unsustainable. That much ought to be obvious. Wholesale, severe cuts to university budgets, and the reduction in the size of departments and academic staff, accompanied by a commensurate increase in staff–student ratios, have plagued Irish universities since the onset of the recession. As a class rep last year attending department meetings, it was immediately apparent the extent to which recent policy has wreaked havoc, as lecturers’ plans to retire were met by colleagues’ anxiety over whether or not there would be the money to replace them. And on it goes.
Up until now, the solution has been an annual “contribution” of €3,000, paid up-front by students and their families when not in receipt of a grant. Of course, €3,000 is not the total cost of a year of university education by any means. “Full fees”, when they have to be paid, are multiples of this figure. There’s no such thing as a free lunch and there’s sure as hell no such thing as a free degree. The question is how, rather than whether, this education is paid for by someone.
Claiming that the proposals present an existential threat to the accessibility, affordability and quality of tertiary education in Ireland mischaracterise a potentially positive development
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In this context, the leaked recommendations of the government-mandated working group on the future of funding in the sector have an awful lot going for them, or so you would think. SUSI would cease paying grants, but give students higher amounts of money for maintenance in College. The contribution would rise to €4,000 per annum, but students would be entitled to a loan (presumably from the state or a state-sponsored body), to be paid back after graduation, at the point when they begin earning the not insignificant sum of €26,000. Average repayment time is estimated at 15 years.
This would actually achieve a lot. For one thing, access to education would be maintained, if not widened, as the contribution is subsumed into a loan which the recipient will not necessarily have to repay. People like my own parents wouldn’t have to save for 20 years to pay for their children’s education. In a broader sense, repaying education fees over the first half of a career will give people a stake in the system for much longer than if they take the degree and run. More tangibly, higher student contributions will safeguard funding against the vagaries of the national economy and the future whims of philistine governments.
Whether or not government funding eventually returns to pre-2007 levels, another recession will be along in its own time too. If, at that point, current campaigners against change want to point out the public service to be cut or regional hospital to be closed in order to maintain funding to the English department, I’ll be there to argue against them. Tertiary education is a social good, but it’s a good on a much longer timescale than health, or indeed, primary and secondary education, will ever be. I await the glorious destruction of the global capitalist order as much as the next man, but until the revolution comes, this isn’t the worst way of doing it.
Of course, vehement opposition to the proposals and anything like them have increased since TCDSU voted against opposing a loan scheme a couple of weeks ago. This wouldn’t be Ireland without a Lisbon II-style re-run however, and council voted last night on an expanded version of the same motion. With all the venom of a school of impressionist painters, words like “realism” have become anathema in the debate. The “Students Against Fees” group have stated clearly what they oppose, but not what they wish to do instead, beyond a vague aspiration to free education for everyone arising from the coffers of the state. Campaigners have propagated a misunderstanding of the issues at stake, however. Portraying the proposals as an attempt to restrict access to education and plunge students into US-style mounds of debt, they misrepresent what is actually on the table. The worries of students are genuine and have to be addressed, but claiming that the proposals present an existential threat to the accessibility, affordability and quality of tertiary education in Ireland mischaracterise a potentially positive development.
The very idea of privately educated students coming out to insist on free third-level education from a state-funded institution smacks of nothing as much as the petulance of a privileged bourgeoisie.
Now, there is a sense in which the opposition of Trinity students, en masse, to loans and fees, is preposterously hypocritical. Trinity News recently revealed 35 per cent of Trinity students as being privately educated (as opposed to only 7 per cent of the general population). The Irish Times later that same week reported the average earnings of Trinity graduates as being north of €60,000. If correct, that figure means a given graduate could pay off their loan in a single year, and still earn more than the person serving their coffee. And if they don’t earn €26,000? They won’t pay squat. The very idea of privately educated students coming out to insist on free third-level education from a state-funded institution smacks of nothing as much as the petulance of a privileged bourgeoisie. And that’s really what this is about – privilege.
No-one claims that Trinity students represent the students of Ireland, far from it. But there is an extent to which all students, from Trinity’s medics-in-training, to the student attending one of the country’s invaluable PLCs, are privileged beyond belief. Going to college is itself a privilege afforded to a tiny minority not only around the world, but throughout history. Primary and secondary education are undoubtedly human rights. University is a privilege, and it is facetious in the extreme to pretend otherwise. There’s surely something to be said for the argument that the costs of my education shouldn’t be foisted upon the disenfranchised people of Dublin 17. Of course, much of the cost of education will still be shouldered directly by the state under the new regime, but with the caveat that the people benefitting directly from that education will be slowly paying for a larger proportion of it. Anti-fees campaigners contend that, as a public good, education should not be treated as a private commodity. While it’s laudable to think of students as engaged in education entirely for its own sake or for altruistic motives, to do so is to misunderstand students, and people. If, like me, you’ve ever thought about future career paths or what you’re qualified to do with your degree, you prove that tertiary education directly benefits the individual before it indirectly benefits their society. Most of us aren’t here for the good of the nation, unfortunately.
Ironically, a loan scheme or graduate tax operates on a modified version of the principles behind any of the great monuments to the welfare state. We’ll give you a National Health Service, which will be paid for by taxing the people who use it (i.e. everyone). Likewise, we’ll send you to college, which will be paid for by taxing the people who directly benefit from it (i.e. graduates). The proposals of the group aren’t perfect. However, excepting the apparition of a route to free publicly funded college, an income-dependent loan scheme accompanied by maintenance payments and ensured funding to our colleges doesn’t seem like the terrible neo-liberal plot it has been made seem.
