Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for bringing forward this Bill which seeks to modernise our higher education sector and brings significant changes to the governance of higher education. This must be balanced with autonomy and, critically, sustained funding of our higher education institutions, which I intend to address later. I will begin by speaking about other aspects the Bill makes reference to, including educational access for those who historically have been under-represented in higher education. The Bill uses the term "priority groups" and states that:

"priority groups", in relation to students in higher education or, as may be appropriate, persons who are seeking to become students in higher education, includes persons who are economically or socially disadvantaged, persons who have a disability or persons from sections of society that are under-represented in the student body in higher education.

Previously, the language proposed in the Bill referred to disadvantaged learners, persons or groups but that was changed following a recommendation from the joint committee, highlighting the need for consistency and clear definitions. I am not opposing this change in language use but I do not believe that disadvantage is of itself a dirty word. I was a student who slotted into that term and I have studied alongside, worked with and, hopefully, represented many other students who also fall within the scope of disadvantage. However, and this is crucial, students are not disadvantaged but rather they are placed at a disadvantage by the system. Students from certain circumstances are not under-represented because of a lack of interest or ability but because the systems which grant access to further and higher education are not as open to them as to others. Students who have made it to higher education from these groups are resilient, have ambition and display leadership in their communities and families. It should be our number one priority to ensure there is a critical mass of students, not just a few, who succeed from what are now being termed "priority groups" and enter into higher education if that is what they choose to do.

If we choose to call students with disabilities, students who come from poorer areas and other students who are under-represented in higher education "priority groups", we need to prioritise their entry and progression through higher education. We also need to prioritise the resources in higher education as well as looking at the system of education prior to higher education and have access work that starts in primary schools or earlier. Otherwise we are just sanitising language and making it more palatable for ourselves rather than for those we seek to represent in this change of wording. These groups of students or potential students will know if they are being prioritised. No matter how many times they are referenced in the Bill, only they will be able to attest to whether the terminology in the Bill is achieved in reality.

The Bill should enhance the voice of students and in that regard, it could go further. While I welcome the fact that all college boards will have student representation, two student representatives on a board of 17 is not sufficient, especially when considering the different cohorts of students, including undergraduates, postgraduates, international students, mature students, part-time students and the students we are now to refer to as "priority groups". We know that college can be a vastly experience for different student cohorts. If we look at one particularly hard example, sexual assault and harassment affect every campus but it is disproportionately certain student cohorts who are assaulted and harassed. The findings of survey conducted by the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, and the National University of Ireland Galway in 2020, which had over 6,00 responses from 21 third level campuses in Ireland, were harrowing. They included that 29% of females and 28% of non-binary students reported non-consensual penetration by incapacitation, force or threat of force during their time in college. Over half the students with a disability, 56%, reported an experience of sexual misconduct by any tactic.

Only today, the findings of the national survey of student and staff experiences of sexual violence and sexual harassment in higher education were released. They, too, were harrowing. Over 1,100 female students reported non-consensual vaginal penetration by incapacitation, coercion, force or threat of force during their time in college.

Less than half, that is, 45% of students, said it was likely that the HEI would take action to address factors that may have led to sexual violence and-or harassment, and 27% said it was likely that their HEI would have a hard time supporting the person who made the report.

We need to change the culture in our colleges and for that, it is essential that all students have a voice that can be heard at all levels of the HEIs. A tokenistic seat or two at the table will not be enough to ensure that our campuses make the changes necessary that are safe and responsive to the needs of students from diverse backgrounds.

Trinity College Dublin, TCD, for example, has four student representatives on its board as it stands. The Bill cut its existing student representation in half. Instead of such a threat, the Bill could follow the positive example of TCD and seek to increase student representation to four or above across the board. As the president of TCD student union and my cousin, Leah Kehoe, put it, if there are no students, there will be no college and no board to govern it.

I would also urge caution on external representations. There could be some recommendation of what type of organisations would have particular value to reduce the risk of external representation being only businesses or those from corporate governance backgrounds. I also believe that there should be a stronger and clearer commitment to engage with students. Section 44(1) on national student engagement states: "An tÚdarás shall, from time to time, at a national level, engage with and seek views from representatives of students (including representatives of students in priority groups)."If this Bill is going to modernise HEIs and set practice, we can do better than "from time to time" being enshrined in the Bill in laying the foundation of student engagement.

There is a great phrase contained in the Bill, which is to "promote, support and fund excellent research in the higher education system across all disciplines ..." I very much welcome that. The Bill, however, misses out in terms of mentioning who those people are who support, contribute and conduct the excellent research.

Postgraduate and PhD students are faced with extremely low pay, and precarious working conditions in higher education are, by nature, omitted from the Bill. This issue is also stifling diversity within research. We need to diversify in order to be excellent.

In 2013, the Irish Research Council's, IRC, PhD scholarship annual stipend was €16,000. Rent in Dublin at that time was €1,050 per month - difficult but manageable in the extreme. Last year brought the first increase to the IRC's PhD scholarship in many years to the sum of €18,050 per annum. It is still wholly inadequate for the cost of living, particularly when one considers the average rent in the capital will set a person back €2,030. It is little wonder that HEA data looking at the socio-economic profile of students found that the PhD cohort in 2018-19 was the most affluent cohort among all types of enrolment. This seems to happen by necessity, not by fate. A person would need to be extremely wealthy to engage in a PhD at this time.

This is not to detail the issue with short-term contracts or staff paid by the hour who do not have access to sick leave or maternity leave. We cannot fund and expect excellent research if we do not recognise that behind the research are human beings with rights and basic needs that must be met. I am very conscious of how we diversify those who have access to the highest level of education in our society. We have made some significant strides in increasing the numbers of those who get to go on to university at third level but when it comes to master's degree and PhD students, we still have a way to go. It now seems that master's degrees and, in particular, PhDs have become the exclusive reserve of those who afford them. That needs to be challenged. Who gets to set exactly what research is in this country? It cannot only be one particular cohort of students. We will miss out on the excellence and diversity required to set credible parameters of research moving forward. We cannot fund and expect excellent research if we do not recognise that it is human beings behind the research, who have basic rights and needs. We also cannot continue to only be concerned by access and equality at the point of entry into higher and further education and ignore it at a postgraduate level and above. This is also something we ignore at Quality and Qualifications Ireland, QQI, and Further Education and Training Awards Council, FETAC, levels of progression.

I will give the Minister of State a particular example. Earlier this year, a constituent got in touch with me. She had ambitions of becoming a nurse. When she did not get the points, she decided to do a QQI level 5 course in nursing and did very well in it, achieving top results. When she started to try to apply for entry into a degree, however, she found out how unlikely she was to get a place because of the few places dedicated to entry from QQI routes in nursing.

Research conducted by my office last year found there were between 1,168 and 1,296 places, depending on level of interest, for level 5 nursing studies run by 27 organisations, yet there were only 152 places among 13 colleges and universities that were offering entry into degrees from these courses from QQI level 5. That is a failure of our system. We are telling young people there are alternative entries into courses, particularly a course such as nursing that attracts people from a wealth of different backgrounds who view it as a vocation. They want to enter it through FETAC and colleges of further education. There are a multitude of great institutions but the entry routes into third level do not exist. We are missing out on a large cohort of people who would be fantastic in that chosen profession by limiting access to third-level degrees. That constituent is no closer to becoming a nurse almost two years on and in truth, as she conveyed to us, it feels to her that she may have wasted a year and a lot of money along the way. There is a huge wealth of alternative entry routes. The previous speaker mentioned some of them, including Trinity Access Programmes and Liberties College. I specifically know a few more in Dublin, for example, Technological University Dublin, formerly Dublin Institute of Technology, DIT. They have great access programmes. We need to look what they have done to foster the model and bring it into a wider national context.

Of course, part of the issue with access to further and higher education lies in the unfairness of the leaving certificate. I fully accept that this Bill cannot factor in the idea of the leaving certificate but it often operates as the entry examination into universities. I do not, therefore, think we can omit talking about it. The Minister of State has no control over that system but the admission method for most courses into HEIs facilitated by the CEO and points system reinforces the inequity of the leaving certificate.

Admission routes and entry into all levels of study need to be examined and most HEIs have done fantastic work here on an individual basis. If their learnings could be captured and replicated, it could be transformative. We need to hold ambition, however, and not safeguard the old ways for the sake of tradition. We are having an interesting conversation about the type of leaving certificate this year's cohort will sit. We need to talk about how we can transform that across the board and see it on a spectrum of not only the leaving certificate but entry routes into college as a whole to see if this current system is suitable for the purposes intended. I do not believe we should design a model now with that in mind if we are to start from scratch.

I welcome sections 37 and 42, which deal with funding frameworks. They allow the HEA to set criteria for funding frameworks and a mechanism for withholding funding if those criteria have not been met. With this, however, there needs to be a promise that HEIs are funded adequately in order that they can address issues such as the mental health and well-being of their students.

There are two references to value for money in the Bill, that is, value for money in public expenditure allocated to funding bodies in higher education under sections 8(1) and 9(1). Here, we need to be careful. Marketisation has dominated the higher education landscape for too long and the underfunding of the sector has been well documented and widely accepted, whish was particularly highlighted in the 2016 Cassells report. I will quote part of the executive summary by Mr. Peter Cassells:

We have the opportunity to set out a new level of ambition for the system and restore it as key enabler of our future development. As a country, we need to be willing to make bold decisions that will ultimately pay dividends for all of us - families, businesses, taxpayers, society.

The ambition of the Bill should be that it pays out dividends for all of us and does not become a stringent value for money exercise. We need to be cognisant of the language we use and the context of underinvestment the sector has had to stomach for years when discussions continue about the funding model of higher education in the State. There is a fear that the Bill will only give power in one direction. The HEIs may be faced with the naughty step or punitive measures from the Minister of State or HEA but by taking on this work to modernise higher education, the Minister of State and HEA are taking responsibility to ensure stainable funding models are provided for higher education. We await and welcome that. Above all, the Bill should seek to ensure our investment in and value of education because we see the inherent value of education at all times and for all people. I thank both the Minister and Minister of State for bring the Bill to the House. We will support it and we believe we can radicalise the matter of higher education in this country.

See this speech in context