The clue is in the title: publicly funded education. The system requires a population who value higher education enough to pay for all the students who enter into the universities and colleges across the country.
The results of a poll by The University Times, which showed that scarcely 50 per cent of those polled would support an increase in taxation to fund free education, should serve as a warning then to those who support publicly funded education.
It’s not that 52 per cent is a poor figure – any political party in Ireland would kill for that level of support right now. But it must be disappointing when, among the very group free education would benefit, only a small majority are happy to commit to paying higher taxes. For a movement that prides itself on grassroots activism, and has dramatically widened its scope of influence in recent years, student leaders might be wondering what kind of funding system do the large minority support.
Indeed, if a Fine Gael adviser in the Department of Education and Skills were to read these figures, they’d probably be relieved. It is often said that students are a loud and powerful lobby group, fighting in solidarity for free education. The figures tell a different story. While the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) might be able to convince thousands of students to march for publicly funded education, they still need to make the argument that free education is worth paying for. While it is likely that well over 50 per cent of students who marched in October would reject an income-contingent loan scheme, a lot fewer, at least in Trinity, seem willing to grapple with the realities of the very system they nominally support.
This paper has already criticised the Oireachtas Education and Skills Committee for its inability to come to a consensus on a new funding model. The poll results indicate that students too might be accused of dragging their feet on the issue, willing to march but unwilling to pay. While it is not all doom and gloom, with 30 per cent saying they were unsure where they stood, the time for uncertainty is also nearly over. We can expect a decision on a new funding model, according to the government, by next year. If publicly funded education is to be seen as a viable option, and one that voters across the country could support, students need to quickly change their attitude to taxation. At the very least, they need to consider it as one of the more likely ways that to fund a system of publicly funded education. Only near unanimous support for higher taxes will be enough to convince Ireland’s political leaders to give free education a chance.
