Sir, – John McManus notes that withdrawing State subsidies from fee-charging schools would neither save the State money, nor change the patterns of students going to “top” universities (“There’s no moral argument for the State to subsidise private schools. Just a pragmatic one,” Opinion, December 21st).
It is true that students from fee-charging schools presently go disproportionately to TCD and UCD.
However, as research consistently shows (eg, Dr Patrick Clancy in UCD, in a series of national surveys of access to higher education from the 1980s to the 2000s, and more recently Dr John Cullinan of the University of Galway and myself) the single biggest factor in choice of higher education institution in Ireland is location.
TCD and UCD recruit predominantly from the affluent southern suburbs of Dublin. Thirty-four of the 50 department of education subsidised fee-charging schools in the country are in Dublin, thus a large part of the presence of former fee-paying students in TCD and UCD is explained by proximity.
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If we use statistical models to adjust for location, the picture of relative university preferences of fee-paying students changes, with Galway rising to the top of the rankings, and UCC also being favoured (UL, DCU and Maynooth still trail).
But students, even former fee-paying students, prefer a shorter commute and stay local. – Yours, etc,
DR BRENDAN HALPIN
Department of Sociology,
University of Limerick,
Castletroy,
Limerick.
