Equality of access to higher education under threat

Countries which have made their way out of recession have invested in education, but Ireland is going in the opposite direction.  In a country supposedly based on republican and christian values, when cuts are made to bailout the rich it is the poor and disadvantaged who are the first to feel the knife.  So it is in education, and it is the highest paid academic in the country who is leading the way in arguing for an end to the idea of universality of access to third level education, and in favour of elites.

Dr. Murphy in China

The public attack on support for 'disadvantaged' students by President of UCC Dr. Michael Murphy was cheered on by the Irish Examiner, a paper which correspondingly failed to get exercised about the vast amounts of cash spent bailing out unsecured bondholders.

Families living in the dismal borderlands
The Irish Examiner article published on December 21st  setting out Dr. Murphy's views warned that "pressure to provide college places for disadvantaged students has triggered an exodus of Ireland’s brightest school-leavers to study abroad".  For a leading academic Dr. Murphy should be ashamed that his views are based not on research but on what he terms 'extensive anecdotal evidence'.  The paper's editorial nevertheless came out in full support of Dr. Murphy, complaining that because "today’s instincts seem to be viscerally opposed to the idea of elites"  the "country’s economic security" is at risk because 'a social project' is giving support to 'families living in the dismal borderlands'.  These supposedly talentless nobodies for whom education is 'a great struggle' are apparently using up resources better invested in the 'ingenuity and competence' of the children of the rich.   This sparked a letter of complaint signed by 26 leading academics "deeply concerned by the comments attributed to UCC President Dr Michael Murphy concerning access students" published by the paper on 24th December.
Dr. Murphy, who received an honorary doctorate in Beijing in 2008, from which many fee-paying students are to be had, waxed philosophical in saying that "If you want one year of prosperity, grow grain, if you want 10 years of prosperity, grow trees. If you want 100 years of prosperity, grow people." He should have added, of course, 'make sure that those 'people' are fee-paying and don't trouble to feed the poor ones'. Dr.Murphy is of course no stranger to elites - his €232,151 salary is the highest of any university president.

The following letter, drawing attention to Dr. Murphy's views and their reception in the Irish Examiner, appears to have been rejected for publication by the paper.  Read it here instead.

"Dear Sir

 Typically slash 'em and burn 'em editorials at the Irish Examiner have twice in recent weeks supported the suggestion by the extravagantly paid President of UCC, Dr Michael Murphy, that there is a funding conflict between disadvantaged students and the academically gifted.  In rejecting criticism by UCC staff that this suggests disadvantaged students are academically weaker and therefore less deserving, Dr Murphy, nevertheless again resorts to arbitrarily segregating students along the most divisive and prejudicial lines imaginable. Perhaps worse than Dr. Murphy's suggestion is the blood lust of his supporters at the prospect of a further economic kicking for poorer members of Irish society.

Certain Irish Examiner editorial writers, having welcomed and praised Dr. Murphy's gratuitous remarks previously are now digging in. While pretending they are all for open debate among academics, they have attacked UCC lecturing staff for speaking out against what Dr Murphy has said by caricaturing their objections as 'in-fighting' and as being likely to deter students - presumably the better off, imaginedly more gifted ones with whom they are dreaming of replacing some of the more disadvantaged. The Irish Examiner employs wealthy columnists who openly and arrogantly boast about 'conditioning' public opinion to accept these attacks on our civil way of life as inevitable when they are anything but. Meanwhile a courageous challenge to unjustified payments of billions that we do not owe to unsecured Anglo Irish Bank bondholders by one of the Examiner's own sports journalists (Diarmuid O' Flynn of the Ballyhea Bondwatch Protest) - is barely acknowledged in the paper though the giveaway of this money is an indefensible attack on us facilitated in the most cowardly way by the present Irish government. 

Labour and Fine Gael voted against even having a debate about these bondholder payments in the Dáil.  When Sinn Féin made the gesture of walking out of the chamber, the Irish Examiner's editorial the next day was burning up with rage not at the outrageous denial of a debate, but at Sinn Fein's mild and appropriate gesture.  Have we heard one word from Dr. Murphy about any of that?  Does he see any funding conflict, I wonder, between this bondholder theft from Irish people and the sort of brutal recommendation he is making himself?  We are presently giving away to bondholder gamblers sums of money that far exceed the deficit which the 'austerity programme' is supposed to address and destroying the possibility of economic recovery for hundreds of thousands of individuals and small businesses in the process. But none of it matters so long as certain people are protected.

As a recent letter-writer to the Examiner pointed out, the fact that the President of an Irish university should be capable of such views let alone confident enough to express them out loud to excited approval from certain quarters should serve as an urgent wake-up call about how dangerous the thinking of our unaccountable, vastly over-paid elites and their servile media cheerleaders has become.

Your faithfully,

Miriam Cotton"