Are The 'No Student Fees' Protests Justified?
College-goers marching against the reintroduction of STUDENT FEES say they aim to protect the disadvantaged. However, the evidence suggests that the end of college fees did not benefit those most in need.
Valerie Flynn, 09 Dec 2010
Some 25,000 students took to the streets last month to protest against the hike in college registration fees, and to express their opposition to the reintroduction of tuition charges.
The march was a big one – by some distance the most successful students have run in years. And it hit the headlines the next day, with most objective observers agreeing that the Gardai overstepped the mark crudely and unnecessarily batoning some of the protesters. But the real story about educational discrimination never makes the headlines. Two Thirds Of People from Neilstown Left Education Before the Age Of 16 doesn’t exactly have a ring to it. Or what about: “Upper middle-class professionals make up only 5% of the population, but their children take up 32% of first-year places in medicine.” It’s hard to imagine it on the front page of The Sun...
The students who took to the streets believe they were there to make a point about equality of access to education. Essentially, the students’ position is that hiking fees will make education the preserve of the wealthier. Union of Students Ireland (USI) President Gary Redmond said as much earlier this year, when he warned that reintroducing tuition fees would “force thousands of students to drop out of college” and would “act as a major barrier to higher education.”
He might be right. The recession knows no demographic boundaries and lots of middle-class families are feeling the pinch. If a father or mother has been forced out of work, finding the extra €500 may well be beyond less well-off middle class students. But there is another battle-ground worth considering too.
Determined By Class
Earlier this year, the UCD economist Kevin Denny published a study entitled What Did Abolishing Fees In Ireland Do? The answer was not what idealistic students might want to hear.
“In Ireland, the abolition of fees did not change the effect of SES [socio-economic gradient] on university entrance,” Denny wrote. “The only obvious effect of the policy was to provide a windfall gain to middle-class parents who no longer had to pay fees.”
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