Uni Fees

Here we go again.

So let's say below €100K no fees, above €120k full fees of circa €8k.

See, I have set myself up as a company, incorporated they call it, gee it feels nice! I pay myself €300k at the minute. So I better drop my salary to €100k. Let the difference be taxed at 12.5% corporation tax and roll up to be subject to capital gains tax of 20%, avoid those damn UNI fees, I got two at UNI which would cost me €16K.

Oops , I forgot, better pay myself €50K and pay the hubie €50K for making the tea so as to get the most outa individualisation.

The moral of the story? No matter what hair-brained scheme they come up with the self employed/sole trader sector will easily subvert it.

Hi Madonna

I thought the self-employed had this sewn up already through Grants?

Marion :hat

Anyone who has any knowledge of how the third level grants schemes work would know that (1) they don't cover fees and (2) self-employed people are actually discriminated against compared to PAYE people earning the same income.

One practical example of point (2) is the fact that the grant authorities disallow many types of genuine business expenses as deductions from income for grant purposes (e.g. interest on monies borrowed to finance capital investment), even where these expenses are treated as fully deductible for tax purposes by the Revenue.

If anyone doubts this, ring your local authority and ask for the relevant forms to be sent to you. They will open your eyes.

ps This point is totally separate from the chicanery which is often used by some people to distort incomes and qualify for grants. However it is worth remembering that not all businesses are easily incorporated and that incorporation costs (especially tax side-effects) would in many instances negate the financial benefit of qualifying for grants. Hence it is unfair and totally incorrect to assume, as many do, that all self-employed people who (1) have children in college and/or (2) qualify for grants have done so through nefarious means.

Leaving aside the arguments about who should or shouldn't get a grant, I think it's only right that those who benefit from a university degree most, the student, should have to pay for it themselves, especially where they come from a higher income home.

The government have missed an opportunity to bring some fairness into Irish third level education by not introducing proper fees and grants for those from low income homes, which could have been financed by fees for those who could afford it most. The money could equally have been spent on providing proper primary school facilities for those who need them most.

Shame on those opportunist politicians, from both the government and the opposition, who opted to take the least controversial route.

The reason the opposition wouldn't agree was that they were responsible for it in the first place. Those wonderfull friends of the workin' class people, the labour party along with their rainbow trouts. It gave everybody a chance to be equal and the rich are singing all the way to the bank.

I'd argue that having free third-level education for all is good for the country as a whole. We'll have a better educated and more highly skilled population which will benefit the economy. The problem of course is increasing access to people from lower-income groups. This should be done by a grant system that targets money to individuals who need the money. There seems to be a suspicion out there that the current system is being unfairly exploited by some sectors, if this is the case, then it must be overhauled. If the government currently does not have enough money to fund a fair grant system, then general taxation should be increased.

Hi Shanks1 and Elcato,

Would you condone a "Graduate Tax" as they have in some countries ? This would only apply to those graduates on earnings above a certain level.

Hi Noel - Should those who sit the Leaving Cert pay more tax than those who leave school early after the Junior Cert?

Noel - I would be against it as this may encourage people to emigrate when they reach the threshold. It could also be an off-putter to people to go to university.

I'm not familiar with the graduate tax, is it related to the cost to the state of your 3rd level education? Because it costs the state a lot less to educate and train a qualified barrister than, say, a consultant would a consultant then pay more graduate tax than a tribunal lawyer?

Had a potter on the internet to look at this. The Australian system which seems to be quoted most as a graduate tax system is in fact just a loan system where they take the loan repayments out of your salary when you earn above a minimum level.

So you go to uni as normal - there are 3 levels of fees (lowest for arts etc., highest for medicine etc.). You can choose to pay upfront (or have your parents pay!) in which case there is no loan to repay so no graduate tax. If you don't pay upfront, you have a loan account which rolls up with inflation until you repay it (or die). If you emigrate, the debt still rolls up and if you return to Australia, it's waiting for you. Debt is repaid by an additional tax which gets credited to your loan account - you can also make lump sum repayments to speed up the paying off.

I came across a few articles which said that participation of poorer people had actually reduced since the scheme was introduced and also that minorities (women(!), blacks, hispanics) took longer to repay the debt than average. I also saw a figure which looked a bit weird to me (economists running amok with projections methinks) that something like 1 in 3 or 4 women would die with their debt still unrepaid (and lots of other scary statistics). What a millstone around your neck for life.

Didn't look like a panacea to me.

IMHO, increased university participation has to start when the children are still in primary school and has to include the parents as well. If the mindset for 14 years (primary and secondary) has been that education is not valuable/not for the likes of us, throwing money at people is not going to make them go to college.

I know people have said before on AAM that upper/middle class parents hot-house their children and give them grinds, school trips etc. which makes the whole system unfair to poorer people but I think a large part of this is back to the mindset again. If I suddenly lost my job, house etc. (and had no family to fall back on for money) and ended up living on welfare in a council house, I would make damned sure that my kids studied hard and that I helped them as much as I could and that they were given every chance to go to college. That's nothing to do with money and everything to do with valuing education as a way of escaping a vicious circle of poverty.

Well that was longer than I intended - I'm sure rainyday (and others) will have plenty to say to try to counter my views so I'll get my flak jacket on.

Hi Alex - not much for me to disagree with there, I'm afraid. I have heard stories of piles of Oz graduates jumping ship to NZ & UK to avoid their loans, which is obviously pretty undesireable.

I agree that education offers the greatest opportunity to break out of the vicious circle of poverty. I guess it's quite difficult to 'sell' that message to those who are stuck in the vicious circle. If you didn't know anyone in your circle of family, friends, neighbours who had gone to university, would you still be so emphatic about the importance of education?

If you didn't know anyone in your circle of family, friends, neighbours who had gone to university, would you still be so emphatic about the importance of education?

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No - but that's exactly the point I was trying to make. Free fees, maintenance grants etc. will do little to improve college take-up rates from poorer areas so the whole 'bring back fees for the well-off so that the poor can go to college' argument is a bit misplaced in my view.

Free fees, maintenance grants etc. will do little to improve college take-up rates from poorer areas so the whole 'bring back fees for the well-off so that the poor can go to college' argument is a bit misplaced in my view.

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Yep - I'd agree with that absolutely. Free fees won't solve the problem of college take-up rates from poorer areas. I do think free education is part of the solution, but it will also take a concerted effort from all of us to change the culture/attitude/eliteism currently associated with 3rd level education to solve this problem.

...a concerted effort from all of us to change the culture/attitude/eliteism currently associated with 3rd level education to solve this problem.

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I agree fully, but despair at the fact that this "culture/attitude/eliteism" is at its worst in the so-called "responsible" news media, especially the Irish Times, who constantly whinge on this topic, solely on the basis of statistics for access to the likes of UCD, TCD etc.

They ignore the fact that a genuine revolution has taken place in access to 3rd level education, via the network of IT's and PLC's up and down the country.

The navel-gazing whingers in the Times perpetuate the misguided prejudice, on the part of some people, against these institutions by running virtual campaigns to claim that somehow the students in these sectors are losing out by not following the traditional TCD/UCD/DCU etc route.

Hello all,

Apologies for not getting back on this one, have been away for a while.

A few comments, if I may:

Rainyday asked:

Should those who sit the Leaving Cert pay more tax than those who leave school early after the Junior Cert?

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The obvious answer to that is No: education for minors is a right, and it is an obligation on society to provide youngsters with access to same. Whether a minor of school leaving age chooses to continue on with their educational career to LC level is a matter for them and their family.

Third level education is a privilige, and, as such, is a very different matter.

When FG/Labour brought in free Uni fees for all in the early nineties, the decision was rightly condemned at the time by the USI as being inequitable. Without some form of grants and encouragement for children from poorer homes, the effect of this effective subsidy to the middle classes would just be to encourage even more children from middle class homes to go to university, while others watched on.

The issue of inequality in education is a very real one. I remember starting in UCD in 1989, and being quite upset at seeing the hoards of kids from private schools there. I came from a 6th year of 120 students in Lucan, where only two boys went onto University. I find it hard to believe that the 6th year pupils in Lucan were any less clever than their peers from Foxrock, but the population profile of first Commerce did not seem to reflect this. I understand, from comments made by the Minister for Education, that this situation is even worse now than it was all those years ago.

Some form of proper workable grant system is rightly needed to encourage broader access. This could be funded in any number of ways: through higher general taxation, through some sort of general Graduate tax, which would be difficult to implement practically, or though removing the subsidy that the sons and daughters of people earning more than a certain level (say €100k a year) enjoy at the expense of the general taxpayer.

Personally, I feel that the last option is the most equitable and practical.

Personally, I feel that the last option is the most equitable and practical.

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But Minister Dempsey's research indicated that removal of free fees for those earning €100k or more would bring in about €8m for the exchequer, which is a mere drop in the ocean for what is required to rebalance access to 3rd level education. And that's ignoring the extra costs with Revenue and/or educational institutions to administer such a scheme. It's hardly worth the bother in practical terms.

But I still don't get why 3rd level education is a privilige and 2nd level education is a right - What's the fundamental difference?

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Gas to hear a Labour party stalwart defending the rights of the wealthiest taxpayers to free third level education, while so many primary school children in deprived areas aren’t even getting adequate primary school teaching.

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What was that about ! I've a good mind to retract ! :lol

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Ah let's get petty - It's really gas to see those who won't engage in rational debate or analysis of the numbers but prefer to just sit back & snipe at others.