Anti fees protest

Lockstep

Was anyone here at the anti fees protest in Dublin?

galwayguy22

I'm currently in 4th year so I couldn't give a **** if they bring back fees to be honest.

Protesting is a futile exercise anyway.

Personally I think fees are a good idea. Far to much people in college just for the sake of it. Maybe higher fee's would make them think twice.

You know the type of people, they fart around all year, end up repeating most of their exams in Autumn(which are far easier), and end up coming out of college with a higher degree yet have very little knowledge in their field.

Higher fees =
less wasters and more people who are there to get a good qualification, and will sacrifice to get it =
Higher quality of graduates =
Higher quality work force =
Innovation and yada yada...you get the idea.

alan4cult

^^^ I sort of agree with you, strangely

galwayguy22

galwayguy22 wrote: »

I'm currently in 4th year so I couldn't give a **** if they bring back fees to be honest.

Protesting is a futile exercise anyway.

Personally I think fees are a good idea. Far to much people in college just for the sake of it. Maybe higher fee's would make them think twice.

You know the type of people, they fart around all year, end up repeating most of their exams in Autumn(which are far easier), and end up coming out of college with a higher degree yet have very little knowledge in their field.

Higher fees =
less wasters and more people who are there to get a good qualification, and will sacrifice to get it =
Higher quality of graduates =
Higher quality work force =
Innovation and yada yada...you get the idea.

You sound like a science head!

Run_to_da_hills

If the weather keeps up the way it is we might have an anti freeze protest.

anonymous_joe

I was there. Was finished my lectures and wandered along.

sneakerfreak

no i was too busy robbing some trinity students at needle point

Lockstep

galwayguy22 wrote: »

I'm currently in 4th year so I couldn't give a **** if they bring back fees to be honest.

Right, well I have younger siblings so it's important to me anyway.

galwayguy22 wrote: »

Protesting is a futile exercise anyway.

Yeah, never worked for the civil rights protesters in the USA.

galwayguy22 wrote: »

Personally I think fees are a good idea. Far to much people in college just for the sake of it. Maybe higher fee's would make them think twice.

You know the type of people, they fart around all year, end up repeating most of their exams in Autumn(which are far easier), and end up coming out of college with a higher degree yet have very little knowledge in their field.

Higher fees =
less wasters and more people who are there to get a good qualification, and will sacrifice to get it =
Higher quality of graduates =
Higher quality work force =
Innovation and yada yada...you get the idea.

I agree college has too many wasters, I'd support a way to get them out but fees are not it; as it is, you get a grant based around your parents income. A friend of mine are estranged from his folks but gets no grant because they are wealthy.
If fees came in, he wouldn't be able to get into college.

Should he be punished because a bunch of wasters think college is a way to have fun?

Also, fees will have no effect on wasters being in college, given that it is likely their parents will be paying for them to go anyway.
THe students I know who are on the grant are hard workers as they know this is their chance to go to college. It's usually the rich kids who are the wasters as they have no need to get a job to get through college etc.

At any rate, this thread is meant to be about the fees protest in DUblin, not the general fees/no fees debate which has already been done to death on boards.

The_Minister

anonymous_joe wrote: »

I was there. Was finished my lectures and wandered along.

Wouldn't have thought that was your cup of tea.

Aldebaran

kickoutthejams wrote: »

Was anyone here at the anti fees protest in Dublin?

Not me, had lectures.:pac:

galwayguy22

Oh and I forgot to say,

Anybody would be able to pay for food and rent plus the proposed fee's with a solid summer job and a weekend job even without help from parents or grant.

Problem is most students piss away enormous amounts of money on alcohol.

If you want something worthwhile in this life you should have to put genuine effort in.

Nightwish

Just to say, thats not entirely true. A B.Eng would cost in the region of €8000 pa. Couple that with cost of living in Dublin, no weekend job would pay for that. My parents couldnt afford to financially support me through college so it was a hefty loan + part-time work. If fees were there, I couldnt have gone to college.

I was at a protest march in 2002. Same thing. Lots of silly banners, political satire and shouting. It was fairly pointless, but the lecturers told us to go along. They said the protesting was part of being a student.

Firetrap

I think it's inevitable that fees will come back in some form or another. I'd prefer the idea of student loans repayable when students start working rather than heaping their parents with tuition fees straight off.

I'm old enough, by the way, to have gone to university before fees were abolished. Even though my parents were earning very average wages, we were apparently too rich for the means test. And so, in October and again in January, my mum had to pay my tuition fees. It wasn't easy by any means (I don't think when you're 17 you really understand the sacrifices your parents are making so that you can go to college) but they managed fine and they're still speaking to me.

Patricide

galwayguy22 wrote: »

Oh and I forgot to say,

Anybody would be able to pay for food and rent plus the proposed fee's with a solid summer job and a weekend job even without help from parents or grant.

Problem is most students piss away enormous amounts of money on alcohol.

If you want something worthwhile in this life you should have to put genuine effort in.

Yeah maybe with a decent summer job and having no money to spend on yourself in the slightest to socialise or do anything during the summer months.

I think the current fees scheme is fair. I didnt like my course so i left last year, came back and paid for my semester outta my own cash. In the current economic climate with it being fairly hard for anyone never mind unqualified students to get a job everyone that wanted to go to college would need to work there arse off. There just arent enough jobs to go around.

ditchhurler

I think that one side benefit to fees would be to improve attendance at lectures - the attendance levels are shocking; if parents were paying 8K or more in fees I think that they might take a keener interest in how their offspring were making use of their funds.

Of course if our students were more mature, they'd have no problem in taking on their own loans rather than abdicating their responsibilities to their parents, just as they do in terms of the applications process - ask any admissions office about who makes the calls - the mammies of Ireland of course, as junior is too shy/disinterested to make the calls about their course queries.

Traditional

Big bad biffo has his boot on yer neck ! youd better break open your piggy bank for next year !!

Run_to_da_hills

Traditional wrote: »

Big bad biffo has his boot on yer neck ! youd better break open your piggy bank for next year !!

You mean the IMF piggybank. :eek:

Tom65

ditchhurler wrote: »

I think that one side benefit to fees would be to improve attendance at lectures - the attendance levels are shocking; if parents were paying 8K or more in fees I think that they might take a keener interest in how their offspring were making use of their funds.

Of course if our students were more mature, they'd have no problem in taking on their own loans rather than abdicating their responsibilities to their parents, just as they do in terms of the applications process - ask any admissions office about who makes the calls - the mammies of Ireland of course, as junior is too shy/disinterested to make the calls about their course queries.

Parents may take an interest, but students will just lie about it. I was looking at Masters courses in America, and one said it was $1,000 per hour of course. Knowing that each class was costing me (not my parents) $1000, I would go every single time. But when some waster is having his parents pay without it making a dent in their or his finances, it doesn't matter.

I'm not against fees exactly, but consider how this government has handled grants, I don't trust them at all to bring in fees. As many people have said, the grants systems has fúcked them over, and fees would do the exact same. I can accept Universities are woefully underfunded. I can accept paying a loan based on firstly, my income after I graduate, and secondly the grades I get. However, what I can't accept is that a government which spends just 4% of it's GDP on education (lower than most OECD countries) expects to have a 'knowledge economy' to bolsters it's finances it's a few years.

If education is an investment for both me and the state (me so I get a decent job, the state to boost it's economy), I can accept that. But if I'm going to pay my part and the state is scrimping out, paying less than it should, that I can't accept.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Did all the protesters show up in designer clothes/make up?

Fees are perfectly fair so long as you don't have to pay until you're in employment after finishing the degree

Patricide

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Did all the protesters show up in designer clothes/make up?

Fees are perfectly fair so long as you don't have to pay until you're in employment after finishing the degree

Good luck telling the banks to give out thousands of students bank loans all at once in the current economic climate....

K-9

If the rich should pay more tax, they should also pay more fees.

tallaght01

It's a tough one, in the current climate.

I've always advocated paying back fees after graduation.

But at the moment I wonder where we'd get the money to implement these changes right now. I mean we'd have to continue paying for the running of universities, but we wouldn't be getting any money paid back for the next few years.

Bottle_of_Smoke

Patricide wrote: »

Good luck telling the banks to give out thousands of students bank loans all at once in the current economic climate....

It would be a government loan like in the UK

Gu3rr1lla

I was there. Too many socialists. The speakers on the stage were muppets and people just cheered along as if they were their saviour.

ANyway, i really hope they dont bring in fees. College is the only hope i have for a good future. Our family has never been "rich" we only make enough to get our daily bread. So my parents wouldnt be able to pay me through college, if fees are brought in i'll be another sucker at the dole line.

brosps

Student fees arn't going to raise the quality of the workforce you daft chicken fillet. What it will do is create a bigger divide between the classes and bring more money to those that already have it n the long run, which could well end up mending the economys equilibrium by reducing the ridiculous amount of middle class families in dublin.

more chicken fillets for me so i dont really care

Patricide

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

It would be a government loan like in the UK

Our government is going to get this money where exactly? There not exactly in the best of financial condition at the moment, what with all the salary caps in the public sector and so on.

What the government needs to do right now is to get jobs into the country, not get rid of college fees. If they get more jobs they get more people employed who pay taxes, get people off benifit and sponging from the country. How theyd go about doing this I have no idea, possibly by giving ireland tax free opertunities for buisnesses, or at least tax breaks. Dunno if that would even work though as the eastern block countrys wage costs are feck all and they have similar breaks.

gamblitis

galwayguy22 wrote: »

Oh and I forgot to say,

Anybody would be able to pay for food and rent plus the proposed fee's with a solid summer job and a weekend job even without help from parents or grant.

Problem is most students piss away enormous amounts of money on alcohol.

If you want something worthwhile in this life you should have to put genuine effort in.

Man you have one serious chip on your shoulder. Theres professionals you can see about that level of bitterness.

Anyway, never made it to the protest today sadly.Was busy working on a college assignment.

Lockstep

Bottle_of_Smoke wrote: »

Fees are perfectly fair so long as you don't have to pay until you're in employment after finishing the degree

Which runs the risk of sidelining employment.

If your going to be paying fees back, then you'll be looking for the most lucrative job possible. Not one which you really want or where you feel a massive vocation for, but one with cash so you can repay the fees.

Rb

Let's all just hope that the bunch of incompetent, greedy, lazy dirt bags that we've had running this country are out of power before the fees are introduced, and that a capable party are elected and start actually finding solutions to the enormous problems in this country that FF and their retarded ministers have caused.

They talk of putting 1.5 BILLION into Anglo Irish to cover sub-ordinated debt, private debt the bank has accumulated while they were giving out millions upon millions to dirty ****ing builders who now can't shift the properties to pay them back yet they can't find 10 million for the cervical jab and money to cover student fees, so that we can continue to have a well educated work force for when our economy turns around?

Our filthy, corrupted Government...and yet people still believe "they're all the same" or "sure they'd do no better". It's no wonder this country is such a ****ing mess.

astrofool

A high % of people with a university education is the only thing stopping us being a third world country at this stage. If we bring in fees, we might as well start shipping people out of the country as soon as they hit 18, as no multinationals will ever be interested in coming to Ireland any more.

Wagon

galwayguy22 wrote: »

Anybody would be able to pay for food and rent plus the proposed fee's with a solid summer job and a weekend job even without help from parents or grant.

Sorry mate, have to disagree with that. There's no way in hell that any student could afford rent and living expenses and fees by working a summer job. When your a student, you get paid minimum wage. So unless you don't sleep all summer and have 2 jobs from start to finish that won't happen. Also, it's far too optimistic to just assume that every student in Ireland will be gaurenteed a job for the summer, especially since it's very hard to get regular work as things are economically.

K-9

astrofool wrote: »

A high % of people with a university education is the only thing stopping us being a third world country at this stage. If we bring in fees, we might as well start shipping people out of the country as soon as they hit 18, as no multinationals will ever be interested in coming to Ireland any more.

Nah, they came here when there was fees.

Wagon wrote: »

Sorry mate, have to disagree with that. There's no way in hell that any student could afford rent and living expenses and fees by working a summer job. When your a student, you get paid minimum wage. So unless you don't sleep all summer and have 2 jobs from start to finish that won't happen. Also, it's far too optimistic to just assume that every student in Ireland will be gaurenteed a job for the summer, especially since it's very hard to get regular work as things are economically.

People managed before the free fees.

Mark200

galwayguy22 wrote: »

Oh and I forgot to say,

Anybody would be able to pay for food and rent plus the proposed fee's with a solid summer job and a weekend job even without help from parents or grant.

My course would be €7000 a year. I had a summer job last summer, about €9 an hour, 40 hours a week. I got about €5000. So to say that I could make up another €2000 AND pay about €4000 for accommodation, and pay for food......is quite ridiculous really.

And I know that I was lucky to get a summer job because my dad was able to get it for me. In case you haven't noticed, there aren't a lot of jobs around these days. If I were to have to pay all this myself, there wouldn't even be any point in me going to college cos I'd have no time to study, I'd be spending all my time trying to pay for it!!!

Rb

Did he mean 4th year of college of 4th year of secondary school?

His complete and utter apparent ignorance is excusable depending on the answer.

ScissorPaperRock

K-9 wrote: »

Nah, they came here when there was fees.



People managed before the free fees.

The reason they came was a combination of a highly-skilled workforce and low corporation tax. Without the highly-skilled workforce - a product of 3rd level education - we would have no edge over the abundance of countries with extremely cheap labour.

I'm sure people did manage to go to college before there were free fees, but I'd imagine the numbers were significantly lower. If the same pattern would emerge it would in turn lead to reduction in the number of highly-skilled employees, and therefore reduced incentive for multinational corporations to base operations here.

K-9

ScissorPaperRoc wrote: »

The reason they came was a combination of a highly-skilled workforce and low corporation tax. Without the highly-skilled workforce - a product of 3rd level education - we would have no edge over the abundance of countries with extremely cheap labour.

I'm sure people did manage to go to college before there were free fees, but I'd imagine the numbers were significantly lower. If the same pattern would emerge it would in turn lead to reduction in the number of highly-skilled employees, and therefore reduced incentive for multinational corporations to base operations here.

Free fees benefited the middle classes, as seen by the amount of cars now owned by students. If many students can afford cars, they can afford fees.

We had a highly skilled workforce before free fees.

ScissorPaperRock

K-9 wrote: »

Free fees benefited the middle classes, as seen by the amount of cars now owned by students. If many students can afford cars, they can afford fees.

Well I'm just talking from experience here, have worked since I've started college, come from a middle class family, and would no in no way be able to afford a car.

K-9 wrote: »

We had a highly skilled workforce before free fees.

Anything to back this?

At the very least I believe it's safe to say that no fees = more 3rd level students = larger highly skilled workforce. Which is what we need.

Wood

Saw them pass my job yesterday, i saw maybe one in ten of the students drinking either cans or bottles of wine.

The Ugg boot brigade were out in force as were the designer handbag mob.

I saw at least 3 different misspellings of the word privilege.

A run of special fight the fees t-shirts? Would that money not be better spent on say.....College fees?

So all in all, judging by the shameful display yesterday i'm glad that fees are being brought in so my tax isn't paying for that shambling mess that "protested" yesterday

K-9

ScissorPaperRoc wrote: »

Well I'm just talking from experience here, have worked since I've started college, come from a middle class family, and would no in no way be able to afford a car.




Anything to back this?

At the very least I believe it's safe to say that no fees = more 3rd level students = larger highly skilled workforce. Which is what we need.

You think we didn't pre 95?

Most probably emigrated though, it was called the brain drain.

ScissorPaperRock

K-9 wrote: »

You think we didn't pre 95?

Most probably emigrated though, it was called the brain drain.

Didn't what? The point I'm making is that it will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of 3rd level students. I believe the increase of fees in the UK led to a reduction of 4%. This would not lead to a stronger foundation for the economy in the future.


And such a brain drain would definitely not be beneficial.

K-9

ScissorPaperRoc wrote: »

Didn't what? The point I'm making is that it will inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of 3rd level students. I believe the increase of fees in the UK led to a reduction of 4%. This would not lead to a stronger foundation for the economy in the future.


And such a brain drain would definitely not be beneficial.

You think this highly skilled workforce suddenly materialised in 1995?

A reduction mightn't be a bad thing. Weed out the ones who do degrees for no real reason.

Targets some of the funds saved at the disadvantaged.

ScissorPaperRock

K-9 wrote: »

You think this highly skilled workforce suddenly materialised in 1995?

Well no, but I'd imagined it has increased dramatically since then.

K-9 wrote: »

A reduction mightn't be a bad thing. Weed out the ones who do degrees for no real reason.

I'd beg to differ. What are those that don't go for degrees supposed to do? Work in unskilled/semi-unskilled jobs? How would they compete with the much cheaper workforces in South Asia or Latin America that would do the same work.

Wagon

K-9 wrote: »

People managed before the free fees.

Yes but we aren't talking about then, we're talking about now.

K-9

ScissorPaperRoc wrote: »

Well no, but I'd imagined it has increased dramatically since then.

It would have anyway with the Celtic Tiger.

ScissorPaperRoc wrote:

I'd beg to differ. What are those that don't go for degrees supposed to do? Work in unskilled/semi-unskilled jobs? How would they compete with the much cheaper workforces in South Asia or Latin America that would do the same work.

69% of the Civil Service have degrees. I doubt they all are being fully optimised. There's a lot of doing degrees just for the sake of it.

Wagon wrote: »

Yes but we aren't talking about then, we're talking about now.

It's a fair comparison.

Wagon

K-9 wrote: »

It's a fair comparison.

What was the price of the fees before? And the rent etc...? I was too young to know.

brianthebard

astrofool wrote: »

A high % of people with a university education is the only thing stopping us being a third world country at this stage. If we bring in fees, we might as well start shipping people out of the country as soon as they hit 18, as no multinationals will ever be interested in coming to Ireland any more.

Multinationals employ mostly semi skilled labourers here.

Also, I've been saying it all along, the re-introduction of fees will only affect those families who can afford to pay fees. I've no sympathy for a family with a combined income of over 100k paying fees.

K-9

brianthebard wrote: »

Multinationals employ mostly semi skilled labourers here.

Also, I've been saying it all along, the re-introduction of fees will only affect those families who can afford to pay fees. I've no sympathy for a family with a combined income of over 100k paying fees.

YEP, that was the limit suggested last year.

K-9

Wagon wrote: »

What was the price of the fees before? And the rent etc...? I was too young to know.

Rent would have been £40/50 per week. Fees about £2/3,000 a year.

I suppose you'd need to adjust for inflation and much higher incomes now.

Lockstep

brianthebard wrote: »

Also, I've been saying it all along, the re-introduction of fees will only affect those families who can afford to pay fees. I've no sympathy for a family with a combined income of over 100k paying fees.

Not true Brian.
It will affect those who's parents are rich.
I believe your counted as a mature student above the age of 23, below that if your parents are rich, then you'd be counted as being able to afford fees.

Regardless of whether or not you get money off them. As I said earlier in the thread, one of my friends is fairly estranged from his parents and they don't help him out at all. He'd be screwed if fees came in.

brianthebard

I really don't see why we should protest fees on account of one person who's estranged from his parents. It will affect those who's parents are rich, correct-those are the people who are best able to afford it, and also as or more importantly the people who have benefitted disproportionally from the introduction of free fees. Free fees were meant to benefit those from come from lower income families, but its the higher earners that have gained the most. Why not correct this?

K-9

brianthebard wrote: »

I really don't see why we should protest fees on account of one person who's estranged from his parents. It will affect those who's parents are rich, correct-those are the people who are best able to afford it, and also as or more importantly the people who have benefitted disproportionally from the introduction of free fees. Free fees were meant to benefit those from come from lower income families, but its the higher earners that have gained the most. Why not correct this?

Enough socialist talk from you!