It's less than two years since Niamh Bhreathnach's decision to abolish undergraduate fees came into effect. However, the fees issue has not gone away. In July the Dearing Report on higher education in Britain recommended the introduction of an annual tuition fee of £1,000 per student for all those whose parents earn more than £16,000 a year.
In August the Minister for Education, Micheal Martin, said it was "a nonsense and an absurdity" to claim - as the Labour Party and some student unions had - that the increase in the college services fee to £250 was some kind of creeping reintroduction of fees. The student service charge, said Martin, was "a drop in the ocean" in the context of the £1,8002,000 annual cost of a student's tuition, and the £70 million he needed to meet the "huge capital needs" of universities over the next five years.
Last month the outspoken president of the University of Limerick, Dr Edward Walsh, warned that, although the abolition of fees had been a popular decision, the Government still had to find the money elsewhere, either through taxation or borrowing.
"Educational planners in other countries are astonished at Ireland's decision to abolish university fees," he said, "since they are actively devising ways to reintroduce or increase fees to ensure that the privileged minority who get a university education make a reasonable contribution to the costs borne by the community as a whole."
Walsh told The Irish Times that European university rectors to whom he spoke at a recent conference in Denmark had queried the Irish decision. They were, however, favourably disposed towards the Australian system which allows student loans to be paid back after graduation through the tax system once a certain income threshold has been reached. In most European countries there are currently no university fees.
UL's president argued that State funds should be concentrated on helping socially disadvantaged young people with ability to get to college. He also urged the Government to study a recent New Zealand government proposal which would allow students to claim up to 75 per cent of course fees back through a government subsidy, with those who could afford it paying the rest themselves.
A number of other university presidents want Ireland to follow the Australian model. Walsh says that since this system was introduced eight years ago in the face of objections that it would discourage lower-income students, the social mix in third-level colleges has not changed. The Australian `income contingent' loan payback system is comparable to the Dearing proposals and the British Labour government's amendments to Dearing.
Several presidents praised British education minister David Blunkett's speech at the Labour Party conference earlier this month in which he defended fees and `income contingent' loans for ensuring that high-earning graduates would pay back a lot, low-earning graduates would pay back a little, and unemployed graduates would pay nothing. "That's a pretty basic principle of fair taxation," he told supportive delegates.
Dr Tom Mitchell of TCD feels that it would be "reasonable, given the huge cost to the taxpayer, that those who benefit in such large measure from a university education for the rest of their lives should be expected to contribute in a small measure towards the cost of that extremely expensive education". He would have much preferred, instead of scrapping fees, if the last government had concentrated on raising the payments threshold for both fees and maintenance grants to around £25,000, so that all those with parental incomes under that figure would get full remission of fees and a decent grant. "That could have thrown open the doors of universities in a real sense," he says.
He is supported by Dr Art Cosgrove of UCD, who points to the recent report by Dr Kathleen Lynch for the Higher Education Authority which concluded that the biggest problem for students from low income backgrounds was just that, lack of money.
Dr Danny O'Hare of Dublin City University sees it as "a question of equity. Free fees were a good decision for middle-income groups which found it difficult to get the money together for fees and other university expenses. However, free fees also benefited higher-income groups while doing nothing for lower-income groups. Those students whose family income was under £17,000 were on maintenance grants and already not paying fees, and therefore did not benefit at all."
A number of presidents expressed concern not only that income through fees has been cut off, but future governments might also start matching student numbers to budget allocations - rather than the other way round - as was done, with disastrous results, in Margaret Thatcher's Britain. Dr Michael Mortell of UCC last week voiced the fears of all the university presidents that the de Buitleir committee, which is examining the cost implications of higher education in the years ahead, will try to cap spending.
