Provost of Trinity College urges Return to Tuition Fees

[Tigrrr]

From today's Irish Times;

In a significant move, Trinity College Dublin provost Dr John Hegarty has called for the return of third-level tuition fees in order to allow Irish universities to compete on equal terms internationally.

Dr Hegarty said it "makes no sense" that many students from a wealthy background were not paying fees at third level, even though their parents had spent €5,000 a year for fee-paying secondary schools and grind schools.

Trinity is the only Irish university in the league table of the top 200 published by the The Times Higher Educational Supplement , where it is ranked 78th in the world.

In an Irish Times interview, Dr Hegarty said: "Look at the universities who are grouped around us. They have a staff-student ratio which is vastly better than ours. On average they receive twice or three times the level of funding from national government."

He also criticised what he termed the "disconnect" between Government rhetoric about a "world-class" university system and the harsh financial reality facing colleges.

While Trinity was managing its finances well, the financial situation was "very tight" and required constant attention.

While acknowledging the huge increase in research funding for the universities, he said this was creating new problems. "The research funding is increasing but the core grant from Government which must put the supports in place, as well as funding undergraduate programmes, is continuing to shrink," he added.

While all the political parties ruled out the return of fees during the election campaign, senior figures in the education sector say the issue is already back on the agenda because of the financial pressures facing the third-level sector.

The funding problems facing Irish colleges is set to dominate a key meeting later this month of the seven university heads, chaired by Dr Hegarty.

In recent months, UCC president Dr Michael Murphy has also publicly backed the return of fees. Universities, he said, were not going to be able to meet the Government objective of building a world-class third-level system without fees and other new resources. "It will prove very difficult for us."

Dr Hegarty stressed that any new fees regime must also make provision for disadvantaged students.

In the run-up to the election, Minister for Education and Science Mary Hanafin said the issue of fees was off the political agenda "for the foreseeable future". Four years ago former minister for education Noel Dempsey pressed for their return but he failed to muster support from the PDs and some other Cabinet members.

The Dempsey plan would have seen fees of some €5,000 a year for most general arts and business courses, with higher fees for prestige courses like law and medicine.

In 2004, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report on higher education in Ireland backed the return of fees, abolished by the then Fine Gael/ Labour coalition in the mid-1990s. Critics say the abolition represented a subsidy to the middle-class and helped boost private fee-paying education at second level, but supporters of free fees say it has helped to widen access to third-level.

Dr Hegarty also expressed concern about the lack of overall planning for the third-level sector. The third-level system, he said, often found itself operating in something of a policy vacuum, without long-term planning and objectives.

Last week, DCU resident Prof Ferdinand von Prondzynski said a cabinet minister should take responsibility for third-level as the Department of Education and Science was preoccupied with primary and second-level schools.

What do people think of this idea?

Although I can see the merit, of course, of making more money available to the Universities, I just cannot get my head around the idea that someone who pays a higher rate of tax on their earnings, someone who pays more tax overall, and who may be working all of the hours God or Gravity sends, may have to shell out for college fees for their children by virtue of these factors actually standing against them.

While I don't believe that an introduction of fees would prevent many students from entering college, it could act as a deterrent to a student, even of a reasonably average middle class family background, from pursuing a course where the value of the degree may not be immediately clear, e.g. History of Art or Gaeilge.

Isn't this a reasonable worry? Could it in fact effect college applications, depending of course on income cut off rate? Would the Government go ahead with it?

We do know that Noel Dempsey had been flirting with the idea back about two years ago.

[PaintingMedium]

i pay college fees because I did not get the points for the course i wanted to do. Although it has been hard to get by sometimes because of bank loans, i do feel like it was worth it for me, to do the course i really wanted. But that is my situation. I could really imagine a situation where so many students simply would not be able to afford it, banks would be the real winners, and from what we see in the U.S, many thousands of students are tied down to debts for large portions of their lives. students pay nearly one thousand if not more a year already for tuition fees,and this sum seems to rise every year, so sooner or later, it will be at that 4 or 5 grand level i think

[KingKane]

Deferring the payment of the fees would be one means to ensure it is the graduate and not the parents that would pay.

[HP]

Its a dreadful idea. Trinity (and all the other unis) should be tapping up these wealthy parents, alumni etc for donations etc the way the priavte schools do and lobbying the govt for an increase in their grant, tax breaks or charitable status.

A return to fees means that the brightest students may be prevented from taking up a place because they are from a poorer background just because the uni can't get its fundraising act together.

What a lazy idea! clearly with brains like Hegarty at the hlem its a wonder Trinners is on the list at all.

Painting Medium, just thank your lucky stars that you are taking out these loans at a time of historically low interest rates, future generations (and probably the near future) won't thank you for your sanguinity.

[PaintingMedium]

It might be a waste of money though, i dont even know what sanguinity means

[rmccann]

The beauty of the current system is that it is possibly as meritocatic a system as is possible. Whilst TCD may be ranked 78th, such polls overwhelmingly concentrate on the amount of medal winners who are professor, the amount and value of research programmes in place and give significant bias to science programmes. The greatest asset of irish universities is the standard of input student.

I would not be in uni if I didn't have free fees

[RBinge]

It's so blindingly simple a child could see the answer.

Access to Education, as well as to Health Services must not ever be allocated on ability to pay. If there is a shortfall in either then we as taxpayers should be prepared to make up the difference.

We are barely civilised as a country if we fall for the ************************eology of means tests and ability to pay as the criteria for access to either.

[irishpeoplearewhingers]

This is a simple question. Universities need more money, so rich people should pay. The rich have already benefitted from tax breaks on property investment, reduced CGT, low corporation taxes, and pay that is in excess of what many of their European counterparts earn. Therefore, it is hardly a massive imposition to ask them to cough up a few quid for fees. Given that the money will be used by universities to fund research and innovation, it will be certainly put to better use than spending it on cocaine, foreign property, mistresses, SUVs, nose jobs, 100K wedding receptions or the usual vanity purchases of a thoroughly unproductive class ( I don't count land-hording and property speculation as being productive- exports are where it's at).
Having just completed my post-grad in a class filled with the children of the so-called "upper classes" ( even though there are only about 5 real upper-class families in Ireland), it makes no sense to me that the state would subsidize lazy ****************************** who are content with breezing through college. I wonder if their parents would allow for such a careless attitude of they had to pay 25-30k for the privelege.
However, extending fees to certain sections of society doesn't really go far enough. More radical solutions are needed. First of all, it is a matter of great concern that there is no party who has a stated-aim of building up a university that is in the top 20 globally, or of having at least 3 in the top 50. The first thing then is that there must be the political will to achieve a clear target. If 78th is as good as it gets, then we can kiss the knowledge economy goodbye.
If we want to get somewhere fast, we need knowledge transfers from foreign universities- INSEAD set a partnership with NUS (Singapore) that has resulted in the creation of a globally competitive university. We need to do the same- maybe not an entire univeristy, but at least within specific disciplines. Top class graduates are one of our few protections against the international wage arbitrage, so we should be luring some of the best American and European universities to set up JVs with Irish universities. This means we target key disciplines and provide generous incentives (cheap land, tax breaks coming out of our ass, tax free salaries for the best international researchers, research grants, private sector involvement....) that will bring us the best. Furthermore, universities themselves need to become more commercially minded, but this process has already started. Overtime, this can attract the best students from abroad (who pay more fees and who can work here upon graduation, further adding to the critical mass of talent in the economy).
If we need extra taxation to build up universities, then so be it- I can think of numerous items that could be taxed in order to raise cash.

[Pidge]

This is a simple question. Universities need more money, so rich people should pay. The rich have already benefitted from tax breaks on property investment, reduced CGT, low corporation taxes, and pay that is in excess of what many of their European counterparts earn. Therefore, it is hardly a massive imposition to ask them to cough up a few quid for fees.

You know exactly what the comeback is: rich people also pay more tax than poor.

Whatever anyone's stance on third-level fees, I think it'd be difficult to bring them back (in the short term). Plenty of parents have to save up in advance to pay for their child's third-level education. When free-fees were brought in, many of them stopped this. It'd be unfair to bring fees back in the short term.

[Tigrrr]

This is a simple question. Universities need more money, so rich people should pay.

Define "rich", and tell us why they should pay. Do you mean people on the higher income tax rate?

The rich have already benefitted from tax breaks on property investment, reduced CGT, low corporation taxes

Not all people on relatively high income can afford to speculate in property, and may not avail of any coporation or capital gains tax breaks whatsoever.

Given that the money will be used by universities to fund research and innovation, it will be certainly put to better use than spending it on cocaine, foreign property, mistresses, SUVs, nose jobs, 100K wedding receptions

Do you actually think that there are many, if any, people, on medium-high incomes who actually live like that? Because the proportion of the population who do live like that, will not be of any real significance to the annual income of the third level educational institutions.
To be significant, the fees would actually need to be relatively common among the student body.

or the usual vanity purchases of a thoroughly unproductive class

A thoroughly unproductive "class" whose property and corporate ventures make this economy what it is, and make free fees at third level achievable in the first instance.

it makes no sense to me that the state would subsidize lazy ****************************** who are content with breezing through college.

This should go for those from disadvantaged backgrounds too, then. Because in my experience, laziness and apathy towards study is pretty consistent among the student population regardless of parental income.