A Question of Fees | Gavin Lynch-Frahill

Gavin Lynch-Frahill discusses the potential onset of an increase in the third level registration fee

     As we head into December’s budget, the Union of Students Ireland is unrolling its annual anti-fees campaign and the politicians ipso facto are feeding us a line of maybes such as, student loan scheme, graduate tax or a small increase in the registration fee. Hmm let me think. Let us forget about all of the protests and just say the registration fee will go up by €250 approx. The USI will pat themselves on the back and say a job well done, and the politicians will turn around and say more of the same toing and froing to the inevitable end result next year. Is it fair to say we are wasting our time protesting or are we really making a big difference? After the budget came out last year I didn’t see any more follow up protests (correct me if I’m mistaken). It must not have been that big a deal.I come from a different line of thought. I believe in the person’s right to a free and unbiased education. That includes third level. All of the economists and accountants in the Express readership are probably screaming at me but hear me out. Education what separates us from the animals, only through our innate human nature to question things do we succeed in building highly complex technological devices and send rockets to outer space. People are still asking questions today. Can we cure cancer? Can we make an iPhone that will call someone when you think you want to speak to them? All of these things are done through innovation. Innovation at the highest levels is mostly developed in universities.Throughout our time in school we are conditioned against asking questions. Statistically small children ask fewer questions in school than in any other place. Historically universities asked more questions about the world than any other place. This is not the case anymore. Listen in to conversations in Coffee Dock and you will hear more about who Shauna scored at the weekend than the state of the country.By imposing debt on students and encouraging them to take loans from Bank of Ireland (graduate tax/student loan whatever they suggest, it is all the same) which they will be forced to pay back after college; this will too limit the amount of questions people will ask. Most educational theorists and philosophers around the world, Noam Chomsky to name one, repeatedly state that by straddling students with debt when they leave college we are forcing them to do one thing. Get a job. Now that is not a bad thing but in this context it is not a great thing either. How many people do you know who graduated are working in call centres? I bet you know someone who has worked in Abtran or a similar company. Did these people aspire to work in customer service before they went to university? I doubt it.The fact of the matter is that when you put someone in debt for going to college it is just another way of indoctrinating them into the role of ‘productive member of society’ who works 9 to 5 asks no questions and lives for the weekend. As a society we cannot allow this to happen or the institutions that wrecked our economy will live to do it another day. So when you are asked to Stand Up with the USI this winter. Stand Up and be counted not for an increase in registration fees but for freedom for graduates to choose whatever path in life want without a debt collector calling to their door. This is another question: do we really want to live our lives worrying where the money to pay the next instalment is coming from?