College fees could be reduced and the SUSI grant system expanded to make college more accessible in Ireland.
Minister for Higher Education Simon Harris published an annual options paper yesterday, which proposed several ways of reducing the cost of further education. One option was to cut college contribution fees by €1,000, which would bring them down to a value of €2,000.
The paper also suggested making the SUSI grant more widely available to Ireland’s student population. 76,000 students were awarded funding under the SUSI system during the last academic year to help alleviate the financial pressures of college.
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Minister Harris said in a statement on Monday: “The Government committed to publishing an annual paper which examines the costs associated with a range of options available to support students with the cost and accessibility of higher education.
“Today we publish this. It is important to stress these are the options available and are do not pre-empt the budgetary process.”
The SUSI grant would be made more widely available under the proposals by adjusting the income thresholds that allow a student to receive payment. Families with a reckonable annual income of under €24,500 are currently entitled to the grant. A change to this rule would allow for the system to be more accommodating of income changes that occur over time.
The maintenance grant that some SUSI applicants are eligible for could also be increased by an additional 25 per cent, a move which would cost government an estimated €11 million. The possibility of postgraduate students receiving the same grant entitlements as undergraduates was also laid out in the options paper.
The news would relieve many students ahead of the new academic year, as Ireland reportedly is one of the most expensive countries for higher level education in the European Union.
Around 71,000 students have applied this year for a SUSI grant, either solely for their fees or for both college fees and the maintenance grant. The figures are slightly lower than applications made for the payment at the same time last year.
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