Budget brings bleak future for students

CUTS outlined in last week’s budget will price some Clare students out of third-level education, a local TD has claimed.

As part of Budget 2011, only students living a minimum of 45 kilometres away from their college will be eligible for the ‘non-adjacent’ grant. Before the Budget, all students living outside a radius of 24km from college were eligible. This change means that payment to thousands of students who live between 24km and 45km from their place of education will be slashed by 62%.
One Ennis woman will see her grant drop by close to €4,000. Mature student Danielle Manning from the Gort Road in the town lives 42km from Limerick Institute of Technology, where she is studying for an honours degree in social care. The mother of two did an evening course for a year to get back to college and is now in her second year of full-time education. She told The Clare Champion that if the cuts announced in the Budget go ahead, she will be left with no option but to drop out of college.
“The situation is that if I lose my non-adjacent grant I will have to pull out of college. I won’t have any other choice, which means that my three years of studying to date will be a complete waste of time. I would have thought it would have made economic sense for the Government to invest in education. It is further segregating poor people. They are not giving people on Social Welfare the opportunity to get into third-level education,” she commented.
“This will put me out of my course and not just myself but many other mature students have said they will be pulling out. I feel the two years in college will have been an absolute waste of time. I thought I was providing a future for myself and my kids to come off Social Welfare and get a decent job. It feels like every avenue that you try to take you just get knocked down. I am also fearful for my kids that I will not be able to provide them with a third-level education,” Ms Manning stated.
According to the Union of Students of Ireland, thousands of families will be affected by the provision in the Budget to dramatically reduce the proportion of students qualifying for the non-adjacent rate of student maintenance grant by changing qualifying criteria from 24km to 45km.
Up until this year, any student who qualified for a maintenance grant and whose family address was more that 24km from their campus, would receive the full amount of €3,250. Some students, including Ms Manning, were entitled to €6,355, which was a special rate of maintenance grant on top of the highest level of the regular grant.
In Budget 2011, Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan announced a 4% reduction in the rates of the grant and also announced an €8 cut in all weekly training allowances and similar support payments.
This means that Ms Manning will see her grant drop by nearly €4,000. As part of the Budget, she saw her Back to Education Allowance drop by €384 per year and as a mother of two young children she also saw her children’s allowance payments drop by €240 per year.
“I am 3km short for getting the full grant and now petrol prices are gone up too. This doesn’t make sense and mature students in Shannon, Newmarket on-Fergus, Ennis and Clarecastle, they will all be less than the 45km so they will lose out too. Last year, the limit was only 24km so it has nearly doubled,” she stated.
Ms Manning is so incensed by the Government’s plans she has now set up an online petition which she plans to present to local representatives in the hope of getting the cuts overturned.
“I am hoping that this change will not go ahead and that the Government will drop the proposal because they will be excluding a lot of people from going to college,” Ms Manning continued.
“Everyone has a constitutional right to education but I don’t think that is being met because people are being excluded. I am under no illusions. I think next year will be an even tougher year than this year. I think there will be other hidden catches that we are not aware of just yet, which will cost us even more money. I really want to urge people to sign the petition.
“I feel like I am fighting for my future and I need support to try to make a change. If I don’t do this, I think I have a very bleak future ahead of me. I would appeal to everyone to sign it, even those who aren’t being affected right now,” Ms Manning concluded.
The petition is called Student Grants and can be signed on www.petitions.ie.
According to Clare Fine Gael TD Joe Carey, the changes outlined in the Budget will force many students to look at third-level institutions outside of those nearest, in an effort to avail of financial assistance.
“This has huge implications for Clare students, who may be studying in Limerick, which is roughly 30km from Ennis. It means that at the stroke of a pen, a large number of third-level students will not now quality for non-adjacent grants from September 2011. I am hugely concerned that a large number of local students living in County Clare and attending third-level institutions in Limerick and Galway City, will see their grant payments dramatically reduced or abolished. What it means in effect is that this year the non-adjacent rate for a full maintenance grant was €3,250. The adjacent rate however, was just €1,300, almost €2,000 per annum less,” Deputy Carey stated.
“While cutting the maintenance grant rate by 5% in 2010, a further cut of 4% will be imposed on students in 2011. On top of this cut, the Government is increasing third-level registration fees from €1,500 to €2,000 per year. The Government is effectively pricing many Clare students out of third-level education,” he claimed.
“These cuts will have a huge effect on many local Clare students and could now force them to travel to third-level education outside of Limerick and Galway. The Government is targeting those who can least afford to pay for third-level education at a time when Ireland needs now, more than ever, to invest in this sector. It is an extraordinarily short-sighted measure and I would encourage all Clare students to make their feelings known in the run-up to the General Election,” Deputy Carey concluded.
Under the specifications outlined in Budget 2011, students of GMIT and NUI Galway living in Gort, Kinvara and New Quay will no longer be entitled to the Non Adjacent Maintenance Grant and many of those studying in UL and LIT and living in Ennis, Newmarket-on-Fergus, Clarecastle, Quin and Tulla will no longer receive non-adjacent grants.
“Students from rural backgrounds will be severely affected by this cut, with thousands being hit by an average of €2,000 per year and some as much as €3,800 per year. It is one thing for students to be hit for a couple of hundred euro per year, it is quite another for students to be hit for a couple of thousand euro per year. This will simply be fatal to the chances of many students from rural backgrounds being able to get through college,” said Union of Students in Ireland President Gary Redmond.
He described the changes as a “direct attack on the higher education of thousands of disadvantaged students around the country.”