O'Keeffe proposes 'study now, pay later' fees option
EDUCATION Minister Batt O'Keeffe yesterday unveiled a range of options to his Cabinet colleagues for the re-introduction of college fees.
Under the minister's preferred option, students would receive a loan from a state agency to cover the cost of college, to be paid back over a fixed timeframe, once their income reached a certain threshold.
The "study now, pay later" plan may be sweetened by allowing the €1,500 a year college registration charge to become part of the loan extended to students.
The registration charge, which covers exams and student services, is jumping from €900 to €1,500 this year.
The move to defer payment of the annual charge would be an attempt to minimise resistance to the ending of free fees, by taking some of the financial pain out of the process at the initial stages. However, it would increase the cost burden on the State in the early years.
Mr O'Keeffe will await the views of other ministers before making a formal recommendation, but he has signalled that he favours a deferred payment system rather than upfront fees.
It is likely to be the autumn, and after the second vote on the Lisbon Treaty, before the minister makes any recommendation to Cabinet.
As well as the loan scheme, the two other main options in the document presented yesterday include the politically unpopular straightforward fees or a package that would include a combination of fees and loan.
The costs that students would be liable for would range from about €7,000 per year for an arts, law or business degree to over €10,000 a year for science and engineering and up to about €30,000 a year for the clinical stages of a medicine degree. It is envisaged that the new scheme would roll out for the 2010-11 academic year, but students starting in college this autumn would also become liable on the basis that they applied for third level in the knowledge that some form of contribution was on the cards.
Access
The argument for ending free fees, introduced in the mid-1990s, rests on the need to find a new way to fund third-level education, particularly at a time of tight exchequer finances.
The annual cost of higher education is about €2.1bn and it needs at least another €500m annually if it is to meet targets for improved access for the less well-off, those who are disabled and mature students.
If the loan scheme gets the go-ahead the sort of detail that would have to be agreed would include the interest rate -- considered likely to be linked to the rate of inflation -- and the income threshold at which students would pay.
Students with lower incomes or who emigrate could avoid repayment but it would remain a lifetime debt and would be regarded in the same light as any other debt by credit agencies.
Opposition to the re-introduction of a student contribution at third level has been led by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and the Labour Party, one of whose former ministers introduced the free frees initiative.
USI is staging a protest outside the Dail today and will hand in proposals to government on alternative ways of raising funds for third level.
- Katherine Donnelly
