The end of an Era

So the government are going to reintroduce Universities Fees. Well I have to say I am not surprised.

NEXT year will mark the end of free third-level education for tens of thousands of students, the Irish Independent can reveal.

Education Minister Batt O’Keeffe last night confirmed he would bring proposals to Cabinet within two weeks which would compel students to pay for their college education.

Now to defend this FF have come out with the tactic they have been using for the last few months and used to defend the medical card fiasco a while back.

“I feel it would be justified to ask those people who are earning quite substantial amounts of money to make a contribution

Now I have to say I love this argument that people who earn more should pay more. All very commie, but yet the most obvious place to apply that logic i.e Income Tax bands has been ignored for the 12 years FF have been in power. (we will see if we get a new band in the budget). But even this logic they use above is reversed in the manner they are planning to have the fees paid.

This is how they seem to be suggesting it works. And you have to love it.

Students would be able to pay fees up-front at a discount or pay the cost, with interest, after they graduate and find work.

So basically if you are rich and can afford to pay it off in bulk you get cheaper university education. Awesome.

Also Science courses are more expensive to run then Medieval English Literature courses. So will students of science degrees be actually financially punished for choosing science? Are even more so then they are at the moment compared to more financially lucrative courses like accountancy?

Free University Education has not been the magic bullet people think it would have been. But it has been successful. The below figures probably have other effecting factors but are still impressive.

Work done by ESRI researchers has shown increased participation by every other social group in college:

• Higher professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers — increased to almost 100pc.
• Farmers — up from 65pc to 89pc.
• Own-account workers, such as personnel managers and credit controllers — up from 39pc to 65pc.
• Employers and managers, and lower professionals such as teachers, technicians — remained around 65pc.
• Skilled manual workers such as bricklayers, plumbers, welders — up from 32pc to 50pc.
• Semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers such as warehouse staff, caretakers, dry cleaners — up from 22pc to 33pc.

But for the non-manual workers’ category there was virtually no change, with participation rates moving from 24pc to only 27pc at a time of massive expansion in higher education.

But most of all I think free fees tell the world that we are serious about education in this country.