WITH the first round of offers for third-level courses due next week through the Central Applications Office (CAO), the Minister for Education and university heads were last night locked in an angry dispute over the creation of new college places.
If no agreement is reached, points requirements for entry to most university courses are likely to remain high.
The universities are refusing to create significant numbers of new places until adequate long-term funding is provided to support them. The Minister's advisers say the £1.4 million which the Higher Education Authority (HEA) has been allocated is enough to provide 1,400 new places.
The Conference of Heads of Irish Universities (CHIU) decided earlier this summer against expanding the intake of the colleges until the question of funding was settled. The heads maintain the universities have not been compensated for taking extra students last autumn.
At present, the seven universities are planning to increase places by a total of about loo this autumn. The £1.4 million on offer, they say, will only cover the cost of these extra places and last year's extra intake.
College heads say they are unable to accommodate more unless recurrent funding for teaching staff and other costs is made available.
CHIU also objects to the fact that the allocation is a once-off payment, and is seeking instead a Government commitment to funding for the three or four years required to complete a degree course. Its costings are based on figures quoted in last year's HEA steering committee report, which estimated the cost per student at almost £4,000 a year.
The Department of Education says it will be easier for the colleges to secure funding from the Department of Finance for the additional students in succeeding years once they have been enrolled. This has drawn a sceptical response. "We played that game in the 1980s, and we all got scorched. It won't happen again," one university president said.
The recurrent funding is separate from the capital expansion programme announced by Ms Breathnach last autumn, which envisages the creation of 6,300 places over five years at a cost of £60 million, half of it to be raised by the colleges. So far, none of the promised places in this programme has materialised, although progress is expected over the next two years.
The Fianna Fail education spokesman, Mr Micheal Martin, yesterday accused the Minister of empty rhetoric", saying she had failed to grasp the opportunity presented by the reduced numbers sitting the Leaving Cert this year to reduce the points requirements for university and to reduce the unacceptable pressure on young people."