This afternoon
Dublin City centre
An estimated crowd of 20,000 students marched through the streets of Dublin from the Custom House to Merrion Square in protest at Student Tution fees and further cuts in the education budget.
Sam Boal/Rollingnews
Everything. As It Happens.
You’re such fupping edgelords with your masks, guys!!
Any twonk with a Guy Fawkes mask should be locked up without parole for at least 17 years!
It’s so short sighted not to make it free again. That’s right wing ideology for you though. Toddlers.
Nothing is free. Someone always ends up paying. When someone says something should be free, what they really mean is that they want someone else to pay for it. “General taxation” is a great thing. It magically pays for everything.
lol
Fee-free third level education is a middle class entitlement.
It is paid for by the taxes of the poor.
The middle class can afford the fees. The poor can’t.
exactly
No it’s actually paid by the future taxes of those very same students.
Graduates generally usually aren’t poor. And low-income people don’t pay much direct tax in Ireland.
Changing the topic, there is a very big issue in Ireland with a high drop-out rate at third level. This is most acute in the institute of technology sector and/or STEM fields. It is a huge waste of state resources and indeed of the time and energy of these students and their parents.
Reducing admissions by about 5% and using the resources to subsidize able, low-income students would be a FAR better way to go.
No one in academia or the USI will ever talk about this btw.
I agree with your changed topic.
Approaching the end of secondary school, kids should be offered a much more comprehensive advice service, one that includes the suggestion that not going to college (or not going right now) are very good options for many people who do not really know what they want to do with the rest of their lives. Going to college because your parents want you to is a bad idea
Great fact checking FC
free stuff for all.
pay for nothing…
poopy these lads – they’ll take their free courses and flee to a foreign land to serve the revenue of a foreign monarch.
student debt , your only man.
I passed on my lunch break, they could be heard right down the quays. Best of luck to them
Free education for who and why?
This is a march by colleges and students for the state to educate young people for the benefit private sector enterprise either nationally or internationally. First years at Third level college should be educated about how costly it is to provide education to the standard required to bring students to a level which prepares them for employment and real life in the industry of their choice.
If students want a third level degree, then pay for the education of your chosen degree. And guess what, I bet the “Arts Degree” will find it hard to get students…. you know all those kids who don’t know what to do after school so they do an Arts Degree for 4 years so they can “find themselves”, well our taxes are paying for lecturers to babysit these poor little souls.
Education is not training for a job.
Let businesses pay to train their own staff, since they profit thereby.
If you resent living in a civilised country, go ahead and move to America.
you would think that but some courses in our universities are – approved by corporate monsters A,B & C
universities actually advertise on this basis. I recall DCU being particular crass in this a few years back.
much of what they learn on undergraduate courses isn’t learning per se but entry level training for these beasts all on tax payers cash .
The people who wrote the software and built the phone/computer you’re using were educated. The people who designed and produced the seat you’re sitting on were educated. The people who designed the road/transport network you used to get to work today were educated. The doctors who are going to treat your blood pressure issues are educated.
What a bunch of entitled moany little do-dos
Half of them will be on grants. Actually half of all Irish students receive grants (Source: Stephen Kinsella).
Grants given are as follows – examples for a family with 1 to 3 kids, with more than 3 kids the income thresholds are higher
– Family income is >50k & 46k & 44k & 44k & <46k = 100% of Student Contribution or 100% of Tuition Fees, + 50% maintenance & field trip cost grants
https://susi.ie/undergraduate-income-threshold-and-grant-award-rates/
Eh what happened my post Broadsheet?
I listed 3 income thresholds and the formatting got all screwed up
TLDR: The kids from families with income under 49k p.a. don’t pay the Student Contribution. That’s a huge portion of the population.
Not to mention Back to Education Allowance!!
You used to need a mere six months unemployment (now nine months) to qualify for fees paid for a four-year degree course, unemployment benefits paid for the whole period as well as entitlement to rent supplement, medical card and the like.
Yes, keeping people housed and fed while they try and better themselves and develop skills and understanding that society can use is a crazy idea!
Except it has zero impact on their employability and costs €200m a year!
Look it up!
https://www.esri.ie/publications/an-evaluation-of-the-back-to-education-allowance-2/
….it’s a living allowance? Do the people who wrote that think folks were putting the fact they were on BTE on their CVs? It’s about being able to eat, pay rent and get a haircut while you’re spending 9 to 5 in lecture rooms and studying at night. What a bizarre “evaluation”.
“spending 9 to 5 in lecture rooms and studying at night. ”
I don’t recall any students doing that when I was in college. We drank for 7 months and crammed for 2 weeks.
JHC, that is gravy…….9 months off – so basically if you take a year off after your leaving cert you’re golden for the next 4 years.
“you’re golden for the next 4 years.”
Yeah €188 a week for 4 years is the life of Reilly. Right wingers have no idea how anything actually works.
That’s not true for all. Once summer break hits you’re means tested. The thresholds are ridiculously low.
Your reading of the grant limits is financially illiterate and does not consider any contextual factors, either for the family, or for the student, who may have to live away from home to attend their offered course.
You also seem to completely discount the general social good reducing the cost of third level education actually does. I availed of a grant as I was raised by a single mother earning under the threshold. I would not have been able to attend university otherwise, despite achieving the requisite academic requirements. I also grew up in an area where affording the current fees would have been a near impossibility for a lot of people. My friends and I are lucky, fees were low, some of us availed of grants, and because of this we have careers we can be proud of, and we are able to contribute to any financial requirements or problems that our family might experience. Am I now one of the entitled because I agree with these students?
I don’t know what you mean by entitled. I see young people trying to get a fairer deal for all, maybe for your kids too. I don’t understand why this makes you angry, and I don’t think I could formulate what you might think as a fair system. What price would you put on a years education at a third level institution in Ireland? Would you make it more expensive to go to Trinity than an IT? Would that then change the class make up, putting those ‘entitled’ students in positions of more entitlement, or more power in Ireland? Would you complain about that? Would you take away some of the current grants or financial helps put in place for students currently? You seem to think they are entitled, so maybe you would, then maybe in a few years, when you need a doctor or dentist for a medical condition, or an engineer or surveyor to build or buy a house, or any other type of qualified professional, and you sit on a waiting list, maybe you might spare a thought for all of those people from backgrounds that might be less entitled than others, who might have been able to help you, if angry, selfish and shortsighted people hadn’t successfully removed a little bit of help for others.
I don’t really think you have thought about this at all.
“I don’t really think you have thought about this at all.”
literal lol
“My reading of this is financially illiterate”?
Yet you provide no evidence I misread the thresholds or the benefits. Good one. The grant you received is clearly paying dividends……..
You’ve misquoted me, Andy. I said your reading is financially illiterate, it would be strange for me to say that mine is in my opening sentence, while disagreeing with you. Anyway, I meant that you lacked context. Grants can’t be considered in a vacumn. For instance, the grant I recieved means I got to go to university, which meant I got a better job, so I pay more tax, which in turn can be used to pay for grants for people like me to get better jobs, which means we can call horrible idiots like you illiterate ad infinitum and discount your horrible idiotic opinions and ignore your poo poo replies that lack any kind of argument. Bye now.
The students are revolting.
Especially that one.
Eww
Check the Young FGer in pic 3, lording it over the rest in his sweet suit and tie (Young SFer just to the right with slogan jumper covering up the shirt and tie)
Having worked in Education for years I can tell you that the Hardware and Software is terribly out of date and not reliable in many colleges because the Government will not allow any more spending on keeping up to date with technology and advances. Students have to buy their own laptops to work on because college equipment is so bad. This is their plan for their “Digital Economy”. They take students entry/registration fees for the course they want, then they DO NOT provide the facilities to learn. As usual its Crony Capitalism in Ireland, or fraud. I totally support the students marching as they are being cheated by the State.
…along with the rest of us it seems.
But because a lot of people don’t honestly care about stuff that doesn’t affect them the gov has yet again created splinters of different ‘complainers’. Another divide and conquer scenario which is what these parasites crave as it takes the attention off them. We need an all Ireland march to get the gov to actually do their job properly and for the people, unite in our frustration. That would be a bigger message to send rather than these smaller demonstrations where we have those not affected sneering at others on their various crusades. This may sound namby-pamby but stand together everyone, we’ve never done that before. Housing, health, education, abortion, various black hole taxes, employment contracts, public transport, Gardaí…the place is in tatters but our media pedals the ‘recovery’ and property at us.
“We need an all Ireland march to get the gov to actually do their job properly and for the people, unite in our frustration”
If you look at this thread alone there are many different views on how student fees should work. There isn’t a clear mandate on how to ‘fix’ this one topic, so how would an all-Ireland ‘fix-everything’ march work?
There are no ‘right’ answers to any of the problems that Ireland faces. Any changes that the gov makes (or don’t make – if they choose not to change something) will help some people and harm others (there will also be a large cohort not really affected). These changes will be supported by some, and rejected by others.
I’m not saying Ireland is perfect – far from it, I think there are lots of areas that need to be improved (you mentioned them above) but there isn’t a silver bullet that will fix housing, health, education, abortion, various black hole taxes, employment contracts, public transport, Gardaí.
Well-said, Cian.
“but there isn’t a silver bullet that will fix housing, health, education, abortion, various black hole taxes, employment contracts, public transport, Gardaí.”
Who said there was?
If you worked in Education for years you’ll also know the incredible incompetence and inefficiencies of third level administrations and the laziness of so many tenured academics, made worse when contrasted with the crappy contracts given to overworked underpaid junior staff.
Most of the incompetence and laziness I saw was not among the teaching staff where I worked but rather higher up in the Government end of administration, but this also depends on whether you are working in a middle sized college (like I was) or somewhere very big like UCD, DCU or Trinity. There’s bound to be some lazy, tenured academics there, I think it might have been reported on the news last year. There’s laziness and incompetence across a lot of civil servants in Ireland. Look at the Gardai, the judicial system, the national broadcaster, its everywhere!
My point is, Students are being ripped off by the education system! This Government are negligent to the needs of a modern Education system.
Having worked in the private sector I’d also like to point out there there’s laziness and incompetence across a lot private industries too.
Are you sure it was 20,000?
look at pics 3 & 6, some of them are just blow up dolls.
There could be dummies behind the masks too!
In a few years from now they’ll all be in employment and will be sneering at the students who expect them to pay higher taxes so they can go on the batter more often.
Very true.
I went on one of these marches back in the day (we were in double figures) and have completely changed my mind since.
So you admit you’re just sneering at the students then. Very good.