Bring back third level fees

Over the next few days thousands of lucky Leaving Cert students will receive CAO offers of places in third level. If their experiences over coming years are anything like mine, they will have times of unprecedented freedom, meet great friends and have doors opened to them that will change their lives. While they might not be the best years of their lives, they will be the best years they have had so far.

The one advantage they have over my generation is that the whole experience will be free. Since the Rainbow Coalition abolished university fees ten years ago, neither students nor their parents have to worry about raising their tuition fees for the year. For the better off that means that anything they earn, if they bother to get a summer job, can be spent on themselves. For the worse off, it makes no difference whatsoever, because despite the hype at the time, the abolition of fees has not had any affect on the pitifully small number of students from the lower socio economic groups entering the top universities.

University fees were abolished mostly at the instigation of the Labour Party who proclaimed that it would increase the chances of students from low income families to attend university. At the time the statistics for entrants to UCD showed that less than 1 per cent came from the lowest income groups. In the intervening decade nothing has changed, it is still easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than it is for a poor man to get in through the gates of UCD, or any of the other NUI universities for that matter.

In reality, what was trumpeted as the democratisation of the third level system, was really a sop to the middle classes. Someone, somewhere, surely believed that this was a way for Labour to hold on to the middle class votes which had gone in droves to the party in the previous election. But when it didn't work and those fickle voters abandoned Labour in the next election, the incoming government and every government since, was caught in a bind. Bring back university fees and incur the wrath of the shifting middle class voter, or do nothing and put up with whinging from the universities. It really is no contest.

But the case for bringing back university fees is irrefutable. In the first place the fees are really not that expensive, when compared to what students have to pay in other countries. If charges were to come back tomorrow a year's tuition in Arts, Law, Commerce and the like would cost under €4,000 in the NUI universities, including the registration fee which now runs up to €1,000. Medicine and dentistry would be the most expensive at about €6,000. Fees in ITs would be a pittance, about €1,700 a year.

Fees in private schools at the moment cost between €3,000 and €5,000 per anum, depending on where you go. Students from these schools gain most from free universities, as they are the most likely to get places in the top third level institutions. The obvious question is why should I or my children who have chosen to pay for private schools for the advantages they endow, receive a state subsidy for further education when I can well afford to pay for it?

Most students, even if their parents couldn't afford to pay these fees for them, are well capable of earning them over the summer and the real issue in third level payments should be maintenance grants and not fees. In the past if I was from a low income family and I actually manage to get a place in third level, I stood a very good chance of getting a fee dispensation from the university. All institutions had a scheme of fee deferrals for low income students and it was applied fairly liberally. My main concern would have been how to keep myself for the year.

In the intervening decade nothing has changed. Without maintenance grants, free tuition means nothing to those from low income backgrounds. To add insult to injury, those worst off who were most in a position to benefit from abolition of fees – mature students – were excluded from the handout.

The scheme has thrown our top universities into crisis. Leaving them dependent on state funding has robbed them of their independence and put a question mark over the quality of the research and in the long run, the education, they can offer.

It will take political courage to change the current system, middle class voters will fight hard to hold on to the subsidy they now receive. But should the money spent on fees go into maintenance grants for those most in need, there really is no argument. Bring back third level fees.