Dr. Caroline McMullan:

I thank the Chairman and the Deputy for recognising that equality of access does not mean equality of opportunity. Something we have taken very seriously in Dublin City University, DCU, and I am sure it is the case in the other universities, is that allowing students into our universities is not enough. We have to make sure they develop to their full potential and that we eliminate as much stress in the system as possible. In the past, we would have had a team at the centre of our university that would have taken much of that work on board. We still have incredible specialist teams at the centre helping our access students in particular but much of that work has been mainstreamed into the general academic role within the business school, for example, but also across the university. To make up for the shortfall in specialist help, we had to put in place a system of one-to-one staff-student consultation in place in first year, which means that all our students are allocated an academic mentor. That has helped. We have also tried to put more sophisticated systems in place to identify early warning signals that a student is not engaging. If they fall off from, say, reading their notes online or their class attendance, we will very quickly intervene to see if there is a problem at home, etc.

Sometimes when we talk about figures, data and money we do not realise the human story behind that and how dedicated many people are in our universities. For example, I have a student who was on a one-year course. He is now four years into the course because of very serious issues that arose. He has come back year after year to try to get through the course. In the end I was calling him in the morning to make sure he was up out of his bed. I was identifying what he would do that day. I was calling him before he went to bed that night to check if he had achieved his objectives for the day and discuss what we would do the next day. I am not saying that to show that I am different. Every one of my colleagues here could tell the members that, but that is how serious we are about not just bringing our students in. We need to talk about access but we need the committee to give us the funding to make sure they exit correctly.

I am pleased to tell the members that in terms of our access programmes, because we are so aware of the students' needs they are competing and completing their programmes very well. I am very proud of that.

Another member asked if there was a problem with choice and whether students choose their own programmes. They sometimes do that. We are trying to eliminate that by opening at night and on Saturdays and bringing in careers teachers to give advice sessions. We all do that but in DCU we are putting more time into that to eliminate, as far as is possible, poor choice. We are also allowing flexibility within the university so if somebody comes in to do a business programme and it is not what they thought it would be or what they wanted, although that does not happen very often, we will transfer them to engineering, the sciences or vice versa.

We are genuinely committed to our students and to the quality of their education experience but we are at close to breaking point. We can extend the day to allow us see our students one-to-one, as Professor Gilchrist said, but we ask the committee not to make us do that for very much longer and instead to put the time and the money into getting this sorted for the benefit of every student in the country, regardless of their geographic or educational needs.