Over the course of Thursday morning, with little fanfare, the Oireachtas Education and Skills Committee probed the heads of universities and heads of institutes of technology on the funding crisis in higher education, their fall in world rankings and if there were any solutions to these two issues.
The Irish Universities Association (IUA) preference for an income-contingent loan scheme was, in hindsight, unsurprising. Prendergast and the President of University College Dublin (UCD), Andrew Deeks, for instance, have both in the past raised little opposition to the idea of such a funding model.
It wasn’t until the second session, when the Technological Higher Education Association (THEA) raised their proposal for publicly funded education for all students up to level seven, while also criticising the prospect of loan schemes, that things got more interesting. A proposal that would see no contribution charge for students on higher certificate programmes or taking ordinary bachelor degrees might prove appealing to politicians as a viable alternative to free education for all. The prospect of a loan scheme and its concurrent threat to grants is most worrying for institutes of technology, which generally have a larger proportion of students relying on state support. Free education for all students at level seven would be a tempting offer for many students’ unions across the country.
While you could imagine the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) whooping at this support from the THEA, such a funding model could cause them a considerable headache. Their march for education last month was a show of solidarity – all students, no matter what college or university, assembled to call for free education. But if it became necessary to accept a compromise on fees, what might the union decide? If THEA’s proposal was to be accepted, USI might themselves have to consider some of the potential compromises that are currently being mulled over in Leinster House.
