Fewer students from poorer backgrounds go to university than they did in the past, and social class remains the main determinant of university participation. That's the finding of a Union of Students of Ireland (USI) study due to be published in the new year.
The study, compiled from student statistics and the 1996 census, highlights that only 0.7 per cent of students come from an "unskilled" or "manual worker" background, compared to 1.2 per cent in 1992. Likewise, the number of children of skilled manual workers attending college has fallen from 14.2 per cent of the university population in 1992 to only 11.3 per cent in the same period.
The president of USI, Philip Madden, says this proves the Government's policy of increasing student numbers at third level has failed to remove the inequalities in participation rates.
"We are concerned at these figures. Simply providing more third-level places has not alleviated inequality in participation. In fact the opposite has happened: inequalities are growing," Madden says.
"It's ridiculous that as everyone in Ireland is getting richer the less fortunate are being excluded. It's as if we're being blinded by the Celtic Tiger to the deficiencies in the system." The statistics provide a university-by-university breakdown of the social backgrounds of students at third level in the Republic. These reveal that Trinity College Dublin remains the college of choice for the professional classes. A massive 34 per cent of Trinity students belong to this social class, compared to only 9 per cent of students who have backgrounds in the skilled, semiskilled or unskilled/manual class category.
UCD has a similarly exclusive student body: 33 per cent of students come from a professional background, compared to, again, only 9 per cent from a skilled, semiskilled or manual background.
In contrast the University of Limerick has the highest percentage of students with a non-professional background; 17 per cent of their students come from a skilled, semiskilled or manual background. UL also has the largest percentage of students from agricultural backgrounds: a quarter of its students come from farming or agricultural backgrounds - proving that rural people haven't been slow to jump on the technological gravy train that UL has been offering for the past decade. USI hopes the publication of these statistics will pressure the Minister for Education, Micheal Martin, to tackle the issue of social exclusion head-on, and put in place imaginative solutions which will increase the number of students from poorer backgrounds attending third-level education.
They are calling on the Government to establish a model based on a mix of the most successful aspects of disadvantaged access programmes, with Statewide and local quotas. This would involve an extra £5 million extra targeted funding for institutions to implement programmes specifically designed to improve participation rates among socially and economically disadvantaged students.
"There's no Statewide programme - each college does its own thing at present," Madden says. "We need to have a co-ordinated strategy where the Government looks back at the most successful programmes used by universities and tries to implement them across the board."
USI has also been strongly promoting the idea of top-up grants for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
"It's a financial issue for most students. It just costs too much for them to go to college without a top-up system to accompany the grant," Madden says.
USI say there are about 10,000 third-level students in the State who have parents in receipt of social-welfare payments. The union's plan would see these families receive an extra £1,000 to supplement their student grant.
