Government's student loan plan branded 'full college fees through the back door'
A new plan to introduce student loans for college students is being criticised as bringing back “full college fees through the back door”.
A Government draft report proposes loan repayments be paid back over 15 years for college tuition, once a student is earning a certain level of income.
The plans for a loan system would make tuition free when students begin college – they would then pay back €25 a week.
USI president Kevin Donoghue said that student loans are not the right way to raise third-level funding, given Ireland already has the second-highest fees in Europe.
"There is an attempt to make it sound as reasonable as possible," he said.
"People continue to use this line 'free at the point of access'. It's free at the point of access in the exact same way that a mortgage is free at the point of access.
"So this idea that €25 a week, that's €1,300 a year, which is quite a significant sum of money, it's €19,500 over the period of 15 years - and in addition to that, there's no guarantee that anything would be capped at that rate."
Sinn Féin Education Spokesperson Jonathan O’Brien said that saddling students with debt is not substitute for a decent grant system.
"We do not want to see a situation whereby the government introduce a loan system that effectively eradicates the grant scheme by stealth, so we have major concerns about these proposals," he said.
However, John Walshe, a former advisor to Minister Ruairi Quinn, says it is not possible for Government to sully fund college education.
"Many people’s instinct will be that if the State could pay more then that would certainly go some way towards meeting the very considerable demands that will be made on higher education over the next few years, but I don’t think that’s possible,” he said.
“And there is a crisis coming in terms of the demographic demand, the number of students is expected to increase by almost a third in the next decade and a half.”
