Professor Ursula Kilkelly:

It is worth touching on a couple of point that were relevant to the issues Deputy Burton raised around the quality of the student experience. I mean in particular the broad sense of that but also the learning experience of students. It is relevant in particular to the skills context, but actually I come back from that a little bit to talk about the much more fundamental process of learning that has been deeply affected by our budgetary situation. Obviously, current staff-student ratios mean we have much larger classes. That is a given. On top of that, however, we have considerably less individualised attention for students and less timely feedback. We have less diverse forms of assessment because of the pressures that creates. We have less time for important pastoral care for our students and less time for the mentoring that happens as part of the educational developmental process. All these things are threatened by our current environment, notwithstanding the enormous efforts staff make every day to provide these to our students.

It is important to remember that a huge amount of innovation is happening around teaching and learning experiences in terms of the level of engagement of staff with teaching and learning formal and informal qualifications and experience and creating a really dynamic learning environment. That is inevitably threatened by our infrastructure in terms of the quality of our classrooms and our labs, but also our libraries, getting students into those libraries and facilitating them through technology and the investment required at individual level to engage. There is a huge range of things that are affected. That also affects the individual capacity of students to engage and learn and be present in the classroom for the learning experience when they are under financial pressure themselves. All that plays out. They may be working part time and so on and have health and well-being issues. There are long queues for counselling and support. It is important that universities step up to that responsibility which is a huge thing that plays into the need for much more sustainable investment and funding in the universities generally.