Grant Us A Piece

Ireland is unique, not only among European countries but among all developed countries, in not even pretending that students can survive on its system of third-level student financial support. The current grant is clearly envisaged as a supplement, something to help out a student who is fortunate enough to have the resources to meet more than half the cost of surviving. It is amazing that this anomaly continues to exist, and indeed to co-exist with so much debate on creating an inclusive society and combating disadvantage.

The most conservative estimate of the cost of living for a third-level student living away from home for the eight-month academic year is £3,872, while the maximum grant for such a student is £1,624. Thus, the grant covers only 42 per cent of the cost. The corresponding figures for a student living at home are £2,152 and £647 (30 per cent). Grant-aided students seek to bridge the gap in three ways: parental contribution, bank loans and work (both vacation and termtime). However, in the case of students from a low-income background, both parental contribution and bank loans (which require a guarantor) are normally out of the question; while a summer job can generate a surplus, there is a limit to the amount of work that can be done during term without academic progress being affected.

It is interesting to compare the higher education grant with the dole and with FAS allowances; if we take the grant as being for 36 weeks, these are the weekly payments for an 18-year-old living at home:

Higher Education

Grant £- 17.97

Dole - £68.40

FAS Allowance £- 67.50and living away from home:

Higher Education

Grant - £45.11

Dole - 68.40

FAS allowance - 92.50

Thus, for a young person living at home, the dole payment is almost four times the higher education grant, while the FAS allowance for a person studying away from home is more than twice the grant.

These anomalies contrast with, for example, the Australian system, where higher education grants, training allowances and the dole are all being subsumed into a "Youth Allowance".

While this approach might not take cognisance of some of the real expenses of being in college, it would be infinitely preferable to what pertains in Ireland at the moment.

In a recent comparison of student support systems in 12 European countries, Ireland emerged as the worst of all. The study, carried out by the Deutsches Studentenwerk in Bonn, compares the countries in terms of both direct and indirect benefits (see table).

These figures don't include common forms of extra support, such as rent subsidies, subsidised meals, health benefits, free travel, payments to parents, tax benefits, and other forms of indirect assistance. It is important to point out that this chart does not include a whole range of indirect subsidies, which are very common in other European countries. Italy, for example, has extensive indirect assistance which makes their total package much more generous than ours. Furthermore, since the survey was published a year ago, Italy has more than doubled its direct grant to 262 ECU per month, putting us firmly at the bottom of the league.

However, this position is clouded by the widespread perception that the present system of allocating higher education grants is unfair - that the sons and daughters of farmers and the self-employed get grants much more easily than those in the PAYE sector. Indeed, this difficult and very sensitive issue may well be delaying any action on the size of the grant. However, this is really a problem with the taxation system, and international experience suggests that it is impossible - and indeed politically very unwise - to seek to reform the tax system by means of the grants system. For example, this was attempted last year in Australia, and the resulting confusion was so great that the scheme was scrapped and the Minister had to resign. By all means let us have tax reform - but in the meantime we should recognise that taxable income is the best available criterion for the award of means-tested grants. To defer action on grants until we have a perfect tax system, or an acceptable corrective, perpetuates the exclusion of genuinely poor students from higher education.

Three common responses to this argument are: all the money should be spent on primary and secondary education; third-level grants should be increased only gradually over time; and we should introduce an enhanced level of grant for "disadvantaged" students. The first two responses assume that there are, at the moment, no poor school-leavers with the ability and desire to go to third level, which is simply not true; the third proposal is based on the false assumption that families on welfare have less disposable income than those in the low-income bracket (say, up to £16,000 per year).

As will be seen from the table, many countries use a mixture of grants and loans in their student support systems. This is certainly an option for the Irish system, but it is not a cheap option. In addition to high administrative costs, loan schemes have high start-up costs and also (if best practice is followed) require a high level of subsidy. For example, in most European systems, interest only begins to accrue at graduation, repayments are income-related, and liability ceases after a fixed period (commonly, 15 years). It might be simpler, therefore, to follow the example of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, and merely increase the existing grants. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Ireland is a signatory, includes a commitment "to make higher education accessible to all on the basis of capacity by every appropriate means" (Article 28c). Ireland is clearly in breach of this. We can no longer claim we are a poor country, and we can no longer continue to spend about £500 million per year on a third-level system which is not only perpetuating the gap between the haves and the have-nots but is in fact helping to widen it. A realistic level of grant will not solve all the problems, but it is a necessary prerequisite for making higher education accessible to all school-leavers with the ability and desire to benefit from it.