Students4Change

Leftist students for social progress.

Month: May 2022

S4C Statement on 2.3% Fee Increase – Boycott the Student Partnership Agreement now!

May 31, 2022 / / 0 Comments

This is our “student partnership”. After the recent defeat of the same proposal through the work of TCDSU, GSU and S4C, they kept re-running the vote at Board until they knew opposition would die, or those who dissent would be absent, and their agenda would be pushed through. Disgraceful.

A non-EU international student in Dublin can already be expected to pay around 30,000 to 40,000 euros just for the tuition fee and rented accommodation. That is insane. To have the audacity to further increase this is beyond comprehension. No wonder many leave after they get their degrees.

We know students who are being evicted, who are struggling to pay for groceries, and who are at risk of not getting their degrees due to the tuition fee arrears. 

According to an FOI request we filed, the number of students in rent or fee arrears shot up to 250 or so during the pandemic. In the face of this, our College has decided to further push us into precarity. The government’s complicity cannot be understated either, as they transformed our universities into for-profit businesses through decades of underfunding.

As a response, we need to boycott the Student Partnership Agreement, which is nothing but a piece of paper that offers students no protections, but is a great PR booster for College. To this end, we have launched a petition.

We invite the TCDSU to boycott the SPA, not just because of the fees, but because due to the HEA Bill 2022, we will lose the Education Officer and Welfare Officer from the Board in the time of the aftershock of a pandemic. Decisions like this will meet even less opposition. As such, we need decisive action.

We also invite the TCDSU to reconsider their political strategy. They should have organised a pre-emptive protest if they knew the 2.3% fee increase was imminent. However, they didn’t tell the union members, S4C, the GSU (who were ill at the time), or the press. 

We need to revisit our political strategy because what we are doing isn’t working.

Sign the petition!

The fee increase is a 2.3% over a 4-year period, with a fee freeze in 2022-2023 but starting in 2023-2024.

FOI Database

May 22, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Students4Change has obtained a variety of data through Freedom of Information Act (FOI) requests over the years and we have created a database of them for public consumption. We believe that open access to information leads to transparency, which means accountability, and accountability means better-run and more democratic organizations. The information we share is also useful for student leaders to advocate in committees or to agitate or for journalists to research.

The FOIs relate to a wide variety of topics, and everybody is welcome to add more. There are about 70 or so FOIs. A large chunk of them relate to Trinity, some to other universities, and some to the government. recent additions include empty properties, disqualification of Professor Sarah Alyn-Stacey, outsourcing, investments and use of animals as experimentation subjects and HEA Bill-related content. The most interesting recent FOI we have is on how all HEIs across Ireland used the mental health funds from the HEA, and how Trinity and UCD specifically used them. 

  • HEA Mental Health Funds
  • Disqualification of Professor Sarah Alyn-Stacey (TCD)
  • Live animal experimentation (TCD) 
  • Rent and Fee Arrears Across All Third-Level Institutions in Ireland
  • Casualization statistics TCD
  • Outsourcing (including in TCD and NUIG)
  • Empty properties TCD
  • Attempted casual pay cuts in 2019 TCD
  • Cheating statistics during Covid-19 and before TCD
  • Partnerships with China
  • School budgeting explanatory booklet from 2018 TCD
  • Complaints re. employment status TCD
  • Counselling waiting times TCD
  • Investments and endowment fund TCD and UCD, including specific partnerships for research funding re. fossil fuels
  • Minister Harris correspondence re. exams and memos and USI meetings
  • Minister Harris’ briefing documents for USI meetings
  • Minister Harris HEA Bill 2022
  • Minister Harris correspondance. re sexual harrasment reporting procedures in UCD
  • Junior Dean statistics TCD
  • Non disclosure agreements TCD
  • RDS Costs TCD
  • Rent and Fee Debt, Dropouts TCD
  • Staff Numbers TCD
  • Drop out rates during Covid-19 TCD
  • Travel costs TCD
  • Students removed due to sexual harrasment allegations TCD
  • Highest paid staff in TCD
  • and more miscellaneous stuff…

You can find them here on our Google Drive folder for FOIs.

We take submissions to the FOI Database at [email protected] !

Raise Your Voice: Transform Higher Education In Ireland (HEA Bill 2022)

May 22, 2022 / / 2 Comments

The plan of the government for third-level education is abysmal. Firstly, there is no commitment to reducing the student fees. Secondly, the funding is less than half of what our universities need. Thirdly, the plan comes with strings attached through the HEA Bill 2022, which is essentially a government takeover to control academia.

Not only does the plan not include a reduction in the student fees, the state is taking over academia. In the over 300-page bill, the “Minister” is mentioned 321 times. He holds sway over universities’ equality policy. The same cabinet that is gifting away the National Maternity Hospital to the church will now hold this power.  He approves the budget of universities. The same neoliberal government that has decimated funding for our universities will now be able to control its finances. He will handpick people on governing bodies of universities. The same academic voices who are now dissenting will be finally muzzled. 

It is a crisis that the government themselves have created, and are now stepping in as saviours to fix it. They will not. They will further push their disastrous neoliberal agenda down our throats. 

Students and staff on the ground will be the most affected. The government promised no student loan system, but they cannot be trusted. They are playing the long game. Now that they will control academia, their policies cannot be stopped. We will be pushed to precarity. 

In line with government policy, there is not a single mention of mental health funding within the plan. Who controls the money will control the policy. Small courses will be cut. Programmes will be merged. Academics will lose their jobs.  

We would like to ask you to support the ongoing petition campaign by Students4Change and the Graduate Students’ Union of Trinity which demands to save the future of higher education in Ireland. Please see our detailed briefing on the issue here. Finally, please see our statement here, an email we sent to Trinity College Dublin here, and our email to TD template here. We are continuing this campaign that we first started in January 2022, see original statement here.

We would like to ask you to support the abolition of student fees, adequate funding for higher-education and protection of our universities’ autonomy. We need to stand up and make our voices heard and warn people of the impending catastrophe that will affect third-level education in Ireland for decades to come if this bill passes.

#StopHEABill22

Sign the petition!

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