Around 1970, just as the impact of free second-level education was being felt, the now defunct Irish Press did a feature on working-class attitudes to the prospects of going to university.
Two journalists picked a typical road in the Dublin Corporation housing estate in Crumlin. They went from door to door asking the adults whether they thought any of their children might to go university. Only one parent expressed the hope that at least some of his children might make it to college. That man was my father.
Even then, almost 30 years ago, the gap between the rising educational expectations of middle-class families and the reality of a place like Crumlin was thought worthy of comment in the Irish Press. Yet, at that time, the expectation was that, however slowly, this gap would have been narrowed virtually out of existence by 2000. Instead, despite massive public investment in education in the decades since, it yawns as widely as ever. So far as I know, I am still the only child of that road to have gone to university. Though there is plenty of competition for the title, this must be the biggest failure of social policy in modern Ireland.
Figures obtained this week by the education correspondent of this newspaper suggest there has been no significant improvement in the rates of university attendance by the children of families in the two lowest-earning socio-economic groups in the last five years.
The semi-skilled and unskilled categories of the labour force make up 17.5 per cent of the population. Yet in 1997, the year studied by Prof Patrick Clancy of UCD for his forthcoming report, just 2.2 per cent of university graduates came from these groups. In real terms, a paltry 115 students from unskilled backgrounds made it to university in 1997. The situation dramatised in the 1980s by Peter Cassells when he calculated that somebody from an unskilled background was five times more likely to go a psychiatric hospital than a university has not greatly improved.
It may be, moreover, that the position of students from poorer backgrounds has really got much worse than the raw figures would suggest. In the early 1970s a university education was not essential for entry into many desirable parts of the workforce. Back then, for example, journalists didn't have to be graduates, whereas now the standard route for entry is through a postgraduate course. The cost of not completing third-level education is now much higher. In the context of competition for the well-paid, rewarding careers now on offer in Ireland, the very modest improvements in working-class participation begin to look more like real losses.
Why has public policy failed so drastically? One explanation might be that the universities themselves are entirely to blame, especially when the rather better records of the institutes of technology are examined.
There is some substance in this argument, but not enough. For one thing, the picture doesn't change very much when all third-level institutions, not just universities, are brought into the frame. According to Prof Clancy's previous authoritative study, Access to College: Patterns of Continuity and Change, the patterns are pretty similar.
Within Dublin, for example, well over half the relevant age group in Rathfarnham and Clonskeagh, Rathmines and Terenure enters some form of higher education. In Darndale, Ballyfermot, or the north inner city, about one in 20 does so. Moreover, while the institutes of technology may be rather better at attracting working-class students than the universities, they don't seem to be all that good at retaining them. A recent ESRI study of the institutes of technology in Carlow, Dundalk and Tralee suggests that a third of the first-year intake failed or dropped out. The evidence suggests that those who dropped out were disproportionately from lower-income backgrounds.
It's striking, too, that family income is not the only factor in determining who does or does not go on to third-level education. Broadly speaking, the children of small farmers, whose income may be low, have been much more successful in educational terms than the children of the urban working-class. In Prof Clancy's earlier report, all of the best-performing counties when it comes to participation rates in higher education are in the west.
The counties with the highest participation rates - all over 40 per cent - are, in descending order, Galway, Kerry, Clare, Mayo, Leitrim, Sligo and Roscommon. The worst-performing counties, from the bottom up, are Laois, Offaly, Kilkenny, Monaghan, Waterford and Dublin. The contrasting fortunes of the rural and urban poor suggest that cultural factors like community expectations must be taken into account.
Which is not to say that money doesn't matter. It is self-evident that the sacrifice of forgoing earned income is much more significant for poorer families than for comfortable ones and that the low level of maintenance grants is a serious barrier to participation for many students.
We know, from yet another study by Patrick Clancy, that about a third of those offered a college place every year turn it down. Some of them choose to repeat the Leaving Certificate in order to get the points for a course for which they have failed to qualify. Some go to colleges outside the State. But many choose to take up jobs or to do Post-Leaving Cert courses for which they get reasonably decent allowances. About 12.3 per cent of those surveyed expressed concerns about the financial cost of going to college.
Money is also a factor in the high drop-out rate from institutes of technology. Those who leave without completing a course are far more likely to have experienced financial difficulties or to be worn out from trying to combine studies with part-time jobs than those who stay on. For a significant number of students, in other words, higher grants could make the difference both in getting to college in the first place and in managing to stay on to complete a degree or diploma.
So could an expansion of the kind of programmes that many third-level institutions have introduced to give special treatment to students from the areas that they serve least well. Some universities and institutes of technology have brought in programmes which allocate places to students from poorer areas who have the minimum requirements but may not have achieved the points. Mostly, these programmes include preliminary courses, one-to-one mentoring and financial support. Most are too new to allow for general conclusions about their success but the indications are that they do work. The case for doing more along these lines is clear.
There is also an overwhelming case for a radical new approach to adult and second-chance education. Compared to most European countries, Ireland has a very poor record of provision for mature students. Our system tends to be all or nothing, with just one shot at making the transition from second to third-level education. For many people from working-class backgrounds, it may not be until they are well into their 20s, with the experiences and ambitions gained from the world of work or from trade unions or community organisations, that the prospect of getting a degree becomes attractive. As things stand, that prospect is almost impossibly distant for most of them.
The biggest problem, however, is with those who don't even get to the starting line in the points race. No amount of innovative thinking at third level is going to turn a demotivated, semi-literate 12-year-old into a hot prospect for a Ph.D.
In many of the poorest areas of the State, staying at school, not getting to university, is the crucial challenge. Provision for children who need remedial education at primary and secondary level is still grossly inadequate. Many working-class areas still have very high levels of early school-leaving. Attendance rates in many schools serving such areas are often alarmingly low. And, for now at least, there are counter-attractions in the world of work.
For all the progress that this society has made, there are still many for whom the future doesn't bear thinking about and it makes most sense to live for today. So long as that is so, a few bob in your pocket will always be more attractive than a few letters after your name.
fotoole@irish-times.ie
