Student Services Charge Campaign

What is it?
The Student Services Charge (colloquially known as the Registration Fee), is a charge that all EU students pay in Irish third-level institutions. It was established in 1996 following the government’s abolition of tuition fees, and was intended to go towards student services such as examinations, student advisers, registration, sports clubs, societies, etc.

How much is it?
The Registration Fee currently sits at €2,000, a far cry from the �150 it was 14 years ago. The first major jump in the fee happened in 2002, and it has gone up steadily since. It rose exorbitantly in 2010 from €1,500 to €2,000.

What’s the problem?
Aside from the continuous rise in the fee, SUs around Ireland discovered that for the past eight years, universities have been diverting a portion of the Registration Fee income to cover other costs arising. This first happened in 2002, when the Higher Education Authority told third-level institutions that their core grant (which is given to them in lieu of tuition fees) would decrease by an amount, and the Registration Fee would increase by the same amount. In short, the increase in the Registration Fee was to cover the decrease in the core grant. This has happened each year over the past eight years, with more and more of the Registration Fee covering more cuts in the core grant.

What’s being done about it?
UCD Students’ Union, along with Trinity Students’ Union, revealed this diversion of students’ money to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Education & Science, which is now investigating the matter. Ireland’s Students’ Unions, along with the national student union, USI, firmly believe that every single cent of a student’s Registration Fee should go towards student services, and nothing else. We believe that the presidents of Ireland’s universities have committted fraud against their students, and should be held accountable. At a recent meeting of the Oireachtas Committee, the seven university presidents were called to explain their arrangements with the Registration Fee. The Minister for Education, Batt O’Keeffe, is due to appear before the Oireachtas Committee in the coming weeks to explain his position on the issue.

To recap:

• €2,000 paid by each student
• €1495 spent to cover cuts in UCD’s core grant
• €505 actually spent on student services

Grants Campaign

What are they?
Higher education maintenance grants are awarded to Irish students whose family income is below a certain threshold. The grants are awarded by students’ local authorities. There are several levels of grants awarded, the highest being €2,545 if a student lives within 24km of their college (‘adjacent’), or €6,355 if they live more than 24 km away (‘non-adjacent’).

What are the issues?
There are several issues with higher education maintenance grants that have been ongoing for a number of years:

• Levels

The levels of the grant are simply not enough. For example, the highest non-adjacent grant level, for which only a small number of students qualify, just about covers the costs of accommodation in some of UCD’s campus residences. This leaves a student very little with which to tackle remaining university expenses.

• Administration

The administrative process surrounding the grants system is at breaking point. It has had no major overhaul since maintenance grants were introduced in the late 60s, most of the administration is done by paper, instead of online. This puts local authority staff under a lot of pressure to manually process each application, and incurs a high cost. The number of applicants jumped this year, given Irish families’ changing financial circumstances. Coupled with the ban on hiring staff in the public sector, local authorities are under severe pressure to complete everything on time.

• Delivery

Grants are delivered in three installments, with usually major delays in each one. For example, last semester, a huge number of students did not receive their first installment until late October/early November, a full two months after the start of lectures. This is unacceptable - grants need to be available at the start of each semester, when university expenses are at their highest.

What’s being done about it?
The government’s proposed Student Support Bill would solve most of the grants problems. However, this has been shelved because the government says there is not enough public money available to implement the changes within the bill. UCD Students’ Union, along with USI, is campaigning hard to ensure this bill becomes law. Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen before September 2010. To compensate for this, UCD Students’ Union has written to all local authorities, proposing small changes that would improve the administrative process immediately, such as paying grant installments by electronic fund transfer instead of cheques, by introducing an online system instead of paper applications, and by introducing nine monthly installments instead of the current three.