Free,poor quality third level education

[patslatt]

The Irish Times reported today in a headline that "Hanafin rules out return of third-level fees". Minister Hanafin's principal justification for this is widening access to college for most people.

It doesn't seem to occur to the minister that widening access doesn't require providing completely free third level education for high income families who could well afford fees.

The no fees policy has very negative consequences for universities, given University presidents' claim that universities are in a funding crisis. Trinity College responded to funding shortages by giving most of the highly desired places in medicine to foreign students who pay the full cost of their education,around €25,000.

Minister Hanafin says there is no funding crisis, arguing that government funding has doubled in the past decade (about 7% a year). But if there is a funding crisis,as appears to be the case,maybe government funding has changed from being completely inadequate to still very inadequate. "She also pointed out that the National Development Plan (NDP) included a €13 billion commitment to the third level sector." If this accumulated figure over the NDP's life sounds impressive, why are third level institutions experiencing funding crises? The NDP is long term in nature and highly elastic (jam tomorrow?)depending on political expediency.

It would be foolish for universities to rely on government funding in the long run,as governments have more pressing priorities than providing free third level education, a point I discussed in a previous blog http://www.politics.ie/viewtopic.php?t= ... highlight=
"Universities or Free Academic Factories".

If the government fails to resolve the universities' funding crisis,as seems likely, where will the professional,scientific and engineering elites be educated to lead Ireland into the knowledge economy of the future that the government likes to talk about?

Will the government follow the lead of France? Recently I read that in France, the government policy of underfunding free, third level academic factories does not apply to elite institutions,principally the lavishly funded Grand Ecoles that educate about 4% of the students. One of them in Paris has educated a huge proportion of the top business and political leaders.

This French approach of pampered, elite educational institutions would not go down well in egalatarian,democratic Ireland. Jackie Healey Rae would be strongly opposed!

So what will happen when Irish universities can afford only second and third rate facilities and labs? Second rate science degrees won't have much market value. The best students whose families can afford it will choose fee paying, well funded foreign universities in England and the USA. A majority of those students will not return, regrettably, as previous brain drains to the USA have shown.

[factual]

University education is very important in terms of giving skills to our workforce and anything that puts people off it should be avoided.

Whilst I am able to listen to the arguments what is essential is to attract more people from deprived areas and from nonstandard backgrounds to university.

[MCM84]

Government funding has increased but so has the every day cost for universities. the ndp will give lots of money to research but no money to the daily expenditure of universities and other third level institutes.

the government benefits when graduates pay higher taxes and attract companies so they should fund third level properly

[erigena]

Let's get this straight; the Irish unis are massively overfunded for what they are. Only one ever gets into the top 200 of the world in the most charitable surveys. Denmark, to take an appropriate contrast, gets several in.

Our unis are not even accredited by international standards. The Victorian examinations board review is not adequate. nor is the DCU/UL one, done by a chair who had already accepted a job at DCU - Michael Gleeson.

This is apart from the gross corruption, abuse of students, appalling management, faculty who would not get a community college job anywhere else. The Greens, in opposition, asked appropriate questions - for example, Dail, 18 Dec 2002. Let's see what they do now.

What is required is accreditation of both private and public systems as the latter has broken down

[patslatt]

Let's get this straight; the Irish unis are massively overfunded for what they are. Only one ever gets into the top 200 of the world in the most charitable surveys. Denmark, to take an appropriate contrast, gets several in.

Our unis are not even accredited by international standards. The Victorian examinations board review is not adequate. nor is the DCU/UL one, done by a chair who had already accepted a job at DCU - Michael Gleeson.

This is apart from the gross corruption, abuse of students, appalling management, faculty who would not get a community college job anywhere else. The Greens, in opposition, asked appropriate questions - for example, Dail, 18 Dec 2002. Let's see what they do now.

What is required is accreditation of both private and public systems as the latter has broken down

That's harsh criticism and it may well be justified. Your critique would be strengtened by more details, however.

For example, which international universities don't recognise our accreditations? What examples can you mention of corruption,abuse of students and appalling managements,without leaving yourself open to slander charges? Why do you think faculty are so inferior?What questions did the Greens ask?

[Papinian]

There are a number of points which I make in response to the posts already made:

(1) The State has three, sometimes divergent, interests in respect of third level education: (a) to ensure that the country has an educated populace capable of generating employment and tax revenue, (b) to promote the development, on an equal basis, of cultural life in the country and that the country contributes to, and responds to, international culture and (c) to give opportunity to all people to access third level education on an equal basis.

(2) The quality of third level education in Ireland is, on one level, relatively high. For example, in the well regarded Academic Ranking of World Universities compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong University and cited widely, including by The Economist magazine, the following Irish universities are ranked (note: QUB is also ranked, and I recognise that it is an Irish university, but have omitted it because here we are discussing third level education in the Republic):

Trinity College Dublin - ranked between 200th and 300th
University College Dublin - ranked between 300th and 400th
University College Cork - ranked between 400th and 500th

The placing of these three universities in the survey has been reasonably consistent over the past five years. The only significant change is that UCC has fallen behind UCD and UCD has risen to overtake UCC. Results in other separate rankings are similar to the above.

However, it is likely that Irish universities are ranked slightly more highly in international surveys as a result of its staff publishing in English. Generally, universities from English speaking countries or countries in which English is used as a third level teaching language (e.g. The Netherlands) do better in such surveys than universities from other countries.

(3) Irish society does not publicly recognise that quality of education varies significantly between institutions. In particular, the vast majority of courses in some Institutes of Technology, such as Letterkenny, Sligo and Tralee, cannot fill their places or fill their places only with students who have performed very poorly in the Leaving Cert. These Institutes of Technology in particular have very high drop out rates.

(4) Irish society does not understand the difference between teaching and research in universities. A traditionally strong teaching ethos in Irish universities is being lost because many younger academic staff do not enjoy teaching and lack the breadth of knowledge in their subject that is essential for teaching.

(5) As funding for third level education has increased, academic education in Ireland has become increasingly detached from the practical aspects of society to which it relates. For example, law faculties in Irish universities have become fixated on "soft" areas of law such as human rights and criminology, while covering more practical areas such as business law and tax law with part time lecturers. Furthermore, the law faculties have the teaching of the more practical areas funded by large Dublin law firms. This might not be objectionable except that practically nothing written by Irish law academics in the areas of human rights or criminology appear in reputatable international or British peer-reviewed journals. I do not know whether it is true in other areas, but while Irish business life has internationalised rapidly over the last ten years, the increased funding of third level education in Ireland has made Irish academia more self-sufficient as regards other countries (e.g. there are now specifically Irish journals and reviews in which Irish academics can publish, so they do not have to compete more widely).

[fiannafuddy]

Consider that there are just 2 accredited universities in the state. We don't pay tuition fees and our graduates are still highly sought after. Surely the argument af university presidents about competing internationally is bullsh1t. We don't want our universities to compete internationally...we want them to be the best they can be for our own students.

If the uni presidents were so worried about a funding crisis surely they wouldn't be giving themselves generous salary increases year on year either....now we know where the €800 registration fee is going

Rant over!!

[MCM84]

They don't need a pay rise they are already well paid and don't have to work long, long hours.

they don't meet students, they don't know their students problems because they don't talk to them.

The are calling for this without looking at the impact that it will have on their students.

Idiots.

[Akrasia]

I don't have a huge problem with introducing a fees system if it is accompanied by a national student loan system and if repayments are conditional on the graduate earning above a high threshold. (ie: everyone pays the fees but they can take out a student loan to cover the cost which will only have to ever be repayed if they start to earn more than, lets say, 80k a year (on their personal income) This would mean that the people who make the most financial profit from their subsidised education would have to pay their subsidy back, but lower earning professions like teaching and nursing would still have free university education.

I do have a problem with just introducing fees and then relying on a means test based on their parents income to see which students are exempted.

[HP]

In my view a well educated workforce is as important as good transport infrastructure to the well being of the economy.

Education should be free to all. Why should parents who are wealthy have to pay for their child when they are no longer a child??

When I was at uni in the UK I knew several people who's parents were extremely wealthy but who refused to pay a bean to help out their offspring who qualified for no financial help from other sources. I was shocked at this but it was for several reasons, family rows, thinking "you're an adult show your worth...."

In short these people were put at a huge disadvantage. In my view, you're 18, you are a citizen and entitled to the same rights as everyone else, no matter what your background, rich or poor.

Also our economy must be very flexible in order to compete globally and this means we need to allow for people to retrain after working in one sector that is no longer performing well. This means mature adult learners who have been made redundant or who are smart enough to see the writing on the wall. We can't realistically expect people to retrain and force the extra expense of fees on them.

Also, the system in Britain and the US is predicated on cheap loans and those days are gone. The credit crunch is here and anyone planning their own, let alone their country's future on the basis of borrowing a lot of money cheaply is very foolish.

Finally the one thing we do need to improve in are 3rd level sector is research. We need good quality home grown research to grow local industry successes, rather than relying on big multinationals for industrial jobs.

The question is how to fund this research. The govt is increasing funding in the key areas of maths, science and engineering which is a good start. But I think our unis and ITs could take one leaf from the American's book. That is they should go after successful graduates and local firms to get grants and donations and to help co-design projects that would be mutually beneficial.