Irish graduates benefit more than most of their OECD counterparts from their third-level education and should have to pay tuition fees as a result, two leading economists have claimed.
Writing in the Irish Banking Review, Dr Colm Harmon and Mr John Sheehan of UCD's Department of Economics also state that the abolition of tuition fees has failed to increase equality of access to higher education and should be discontinued.
"There is an unambiguously positive effect on the earnings of an individual from education," the authors state. "For Ireland, standard estimation of the return to education gives returns of around 9-11 per cent for males and around 14 per cent for females."
This is higher than in most other OECD countries. As a result, there would need to be significant returns to society over and above what is accumulating to the individual in order to justify State subsidies to higher education, the authors believe.
Among the authors' recommendations are a gradual "tapering" of grant eligibility to allow people with incomes of €30,000- €130,000, for example, to receive some form of grant. They also argue for the introduction of cost-related fees for all undergraduate courses; the targeting of grants on social need and loans on prospective earnings; and the removal of quantitative restrictions for institutions that can earn fees based on marginal costs.
