Universities debate use of student 'fee'

HEADS OF the State’s main universities have acknowledged that the student registration charge is being used to fund core services such as libraries and was a “fee”.

The Joint Oireachtas Education Committee met yesterday to discuss the use of the student support charge with the heads of seven universities and the Higher Education Authority (HEA).

The € 1,500 charge was used for a wide range of services and there was no precise definition of a student service, the universities acknowledged in a joint submission.

“Academic and other services” was the largest category of use for the student charge. This category includes library and information systems, figures submitted by the universities revealed. In the case of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and University College Dublin (UCD) this use accounted for more than half of the charge.

In a letter to the committee, the seven university student union presidents said information technology and library services were “core academic services” and were moved under the student services charge expenditure “in a bid to account for the substantial increases over previous years”.

Prof Ferdinand Von Pondzynski, president of Dublin City University (DCU), said there was no change of definition or improper accounting. When the student charge was first introduced, it was not large enough to use for a whole range of services, he said.

Dr Michael Murphy, president of University College Cork (UCC), highlighted the ambiguity by asking if filling potholes left by the bad weather was a student service or part of the core funding of the university.

Prof Hegarty was asked by committee chairman Paul Gogarty TD about the use of the charge to fund an animal research facility. He said there was some “tweaking” to be done in the definition of student services at TCD.

Chief executive of the HEA Tom Boland said that student services were broader than clubs and the students union. The library was “not excluded” from the definition, he said.

Conan Ó Broin of TCD students union said the universities were attempting to “rewrite history” by saying that library services were always student services. The heads also indicated that the student service charge was a type of fee.

UCD president Dr Hugh Brady said the charge was “ a non-tuition fee.”

Prof John Hughes, president of NUI Maynooth, said the charge was a fee whether it was called a student service charge or something else. The adjustment in the core funding from the Government tended to be matched by an adjustment in the student service charge, he said.

Dr Murphy said the international perception was realistic, that Ireland had fees even if this was not acknowledged.

TCD provost Prof John Hegarty said the core funding and the student service charge were linked. The connection between the increase in the charge and the core grant going down was “not accidental”, he said.

Prof Pondzynski said the charge was a “fee”. This situation was “inevitable” when the student service charged was introduced following the abolition of fees in 1996.

Mr Boland of the HEA said that tuition was paid for by the state. “There are no tuition fees for higher education,” he said.

Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes said it was a “gigantic game of bluff” by Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe, the HEA and the seven universities. Fees were being “effectively introduced by the back door”.

In a statement later, Mr O’Keeffe said the remarks by the presidents was nothing new because the registration charge is a fee. “Historically, colleges have expressed the view that the registration fee was not sufficient to cover the costs of providing student services.”

The universities jointly supported a student loan system to fund third-level education.