Trinity’s decision to introduce a flat fee of €450 for supplemental exams is bound to cause outrage. With any luck, it’ll cause enough that students will want to stand up and fight back because this, as has been made very clear over the last while, is not a once-off.
The introduction of fees to sit supplementals was never going to go down well. In the recent TCDSU preferendum on the issue, the most popular option voted for by students opposed them altogether. Last month, former TCDSU president Domhnall McGlacken-Byrne spoke out strongly against any form of supplemental fees, calling them a terrible deal for all students. And this was all while figures such as €200 per exam were still being thrown around.
That the college has decided to introduce a flat fee of €450 for supplementals – in spite of how many exams someone has failed – beggars belief. It’s unfathomable that a student who has failed just one exam will have to fork out nearly half of €1,000 simply to sit their supplemental and proceed onto the next year.
Even if you take the stance that supplemental fees were something of an inevitability – Trinity is the last university in the country not to have them – this is a shocking outcome.
To put this into context, University College Dublin (UCD) charges €230 per module, while University College Cork (UCC), the cheapest university in this regard, caps fees entirely at €245. Both of these options amount to over €200 less than what Trinity has somehow determined as the cost to sit a single exam.
Sure, a flat fee means that students might not have to pay up to €1,000 to repeat a number of exams, as is the case in UCD. But the reality is that most students sitting supplementals have failed only one or two exams, which under the original suggestion of €200 per module would still be cheaper. In any case, €450 is a scandalously steep starting point.
The College seems out of touch with the reality of what is financially workable for its students today
Students already exempt from paying fees, such as those in receipt of the SUSI grant, will not be subject to these new charges. But as always, the support systems that alleviate pressure for some still leave many wide cracks through which large numbers of students fall, and the constant addition of new costs only pushes these people deeper into financial strain.
The new fees will put added pressure on any middle-of-the-road families who can’t avail of financial aid, but may already struggle to cover Ireland’s comparatively high registration fees, as well as the ever-increasing costs of living in Dublin city. The reason that many people fail exams in the first place stems from financial instability, with some students having to juggle long hours and studying, while others are mentally put-upon from the struggles of making ends meet.
As always, the support systems that alleviate pressure for some still leave many wide cracks, through which large numbers of students fall
Even apart from students already in tight spots, I don’t think there are many young people in Trinity in the position to easily part with such a profound sum of money. It really is going to be hard for people to wrap their head around such an abrupt leap from zero to this.
Trinity has been consistently criticised this year for pricing people out of college. An ongoing funding crisis means money has to come from somewhere. But from the relentless increases in postgraduate fees to the unrealistically high cost of the accommodation they secured, the College seems out of touch with the reality of what is financially workable for its students today. By continuing to sacrifice them in this way, it seems like Trinity is taking several steps backward in terms of creating a fair, equal and inclusive college.
