One man in Armagh wondered why Scottish university students aren’t required to pay for university fees while in Northern Ireland, students have no choice but to pay for a university education.
Stephen Farry spoke of how the Assembly have a block budget allocated to them and how free university fees would lead to greater expense elsewhere at a cost of ’40 to 60million pounds’. He went on to say that he supported the notion that a university education should be free of cost.
Dominic Bradley echoed the sentiment that education should be free. He went on to say: “I don’t think it’s fair that students are being lumbered with huge debts when they start off their working lives and we should continue to improve the funding of university education.”
What do you think about the difficulties associated in taking money from other sectors in order to fund a university education? Do you agree with the panel that a university education should be free?
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I think there is merit in funding students with both fees and reasonable living costs during their time at University subject to satisfactory performance on their courses.
After they leave in most cases they should attract higher paid salaries than people without a University education and they could possibly therefore afford to repay the cost through some sort of tax mechanism.
It is important that University education is available to all social classes on the basis of academic ability rather than ability to pay if we are to create a highly skilled entrepreneurial workforce to lift the economy out of recession.