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Third level fees not the answer, claims Hinfelaar E-mail
Written by Rachael Finucane   
Wednesday, 15 October 2008

Dr Maria Hinfelaar said that while the Government struggles to fund the sector “due to the difficult economic climate”, institutions “are struggling to resource programmes and support services” and tuition fees are not necessarily the “panacea”.
“Changes to the current system would affect students at universities, institutes of technology and other colleges. The recent publication by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ‘Education at a Glance 2008’ can shed much-needed light on these issues. An undeniable statistic in the OECD report is that the expenditure per student in our institutes of technology and universities decreased from over €8000 to under €7000 in the period 2000 to 2005,” she said.
“This ranks Ireland in the bottom half of the OECD countries. Over the same period, per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Ireland rocketed to unprecedented levels only surpassed by the US.”
Dr Hinfelaar said that since investment in higher education in Ireland “has not kept pace with inflation and for 2009 a further 3% cutback has been imposed”, it is now likely that it has been “overtaken by more of the OECD countries, bringing us perilously close to the bottom of the list”—a shocking statistic for a country which values education so highly and attracts investment based on its well-educated population.
She pointed out that taking only State investment into account, Ireland’s funding levels “rank actually identical to those in the United States” but the difference lies in private investment (“primarily derived from tuition fees”).
“Ireland’s higher education institutions receive a modest level of private funding in the form of the student capitation or student services fee. This has been set at €900 for this academic year representing an increase of €75 per student over last year’s fee, but most of this increase was absorbed by the State. The OECD report concludes that while choices between greater public investments and a larger share of private money are difficult to make, doing neither in the face of the rising demand for more and better tertiary education seems no longer an option,” she said.
“There has been much talk of what might be an acceptable income threshold for the purpose of charging fees, but nothing has been said yet about the potential skewing effect this would have on our higher education institutions which do not enrol similar numbers of students from wealthier backgrounds. The Institute of Technology sector has taken in far greater numbers of students who are first-generation entrants into third level. What moderating mechanisms would be put in place to prevent underfunding of the institutes of technology?”
She said she would worry that one or two “elite universities” will be blessed with “disproportionately large cohorts of fee-paying students, while other institutions continue to be squeezed by shrinking State funds”.
She suggested “that a review of interest-free loan systems for living expenses as implemented in other countries is undertaken as part of the government’s examination of all third level funding issues. As a stand-alone measure, the reintroduction of tuition fees is definitely not the panacea”.
 
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