Madam, - Your opinion poll and strong Editorial on the return of college fees (October 22nd) should stimulate an informed response to the Minister for Education's initiatives. As you state, "Mr Dempsey's challenge is to devise an equitable grants scheme which identifies those who can afford to pay fees and assists those with real needs." The alternative is the myth that all benefit from investment in third-level education at zero cost to society as a whole.
Research has indicated for some decades now that the benefits from investment in education accrue overwhelmingly to the person in whom the investment is made. Taxpayer finance of higher education is regressive because college attendance ranges from almost 100 per cent in the highest social group to only a fifth in the lowest social group.
The higher education grants scheme is also inefficient in not reaching the target social groups. The de Buitlear Report found that the top 20 per cent income group took 16 per cent of this finance. The report found a grant holder with assets of over £500,000 in the early 1990s declaring an income sufficiently low to qualify for a full grant.
The problem of inequality arises at primary and secondary schools levels. Unless the problems of dropout and failure are tackled at these levels, measures to assist at third level will never address the full population of those who do not participate in higher education. Dale Tussing made the point two decades ago at the ESRI that the public-good component of education is the part where we have universal participation.
I dispute your Editorial's claim that "the élitist nature of third-level education in this State has been a blight on this society for a generation and more". Irish universities were shown in the early 1990s to produce world-class graduates at about half the cost in the UK. Visiting students from mainland Europe and North America today comment most favourably on the easy accessibility of their lecturers here compared with their home universities.
Colleges have, however, by administrative inefficiency contributed to social rather than academic elitism. When universities over decades refuse to respond to the preferences of their student applicants they generate massive supernormal earnings for those in the professions to which new entrants are restricted.
The abolition of fee income has been bad for the colleges themselves. Senior figures in the colleges now do either no lecturing and research at all, or have reduced commitments. They relate mainly to the growing number of external and internal bureaucrats who are destroying the university experience for students and staff alike and are divorced from the academic life of the colleges they are supposed to lead.
The goals of those who abolished college fees have not been realised. The abolition was seriously regressive. The grants scheme is scandalous in its lack of help for those in need. The efficient traditional Irish college as an academic and collegiate institution has become bureaucratic and wasteful since Exchequer finance replaced student fees. The entire student finance system needs reform and our colleges need rescuing from their bureaucratic takeover since fee abolition. - Yours, etc.,
Dr SEAN BARRETT,
Department of Economics,
Trinity College,
Dublin 2.