Thursday, November 01, 2007
Why don’t students cross the border any more?
[This is taken from A Note from the Next Door Neighbours, the monthly e-bulletin of Andy Pollak, Director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin]
One column leads to another. Responding to my colleague Patricia Clarke’s Note from the Next Door Neighbours last month on the row about cross-border pupils using their grannies’ addresses to obtain school places in Derry, an irate parent has contacted us about his daughter’s cross-border higher education disappointment. This man is a Northern Ireland resident who owns a small business and pays his taxes in the Republic. This summer his daughter received As in her four A-level exams, the highest mark achievable in the British school-leaving exam (since no student in the UK ever takes more than four subjects at A-level, except in extraordinary circumstances). Her dream had been to do medicine at a university in the Republic, but no Southern university would take her, since four As at A-level apparently does not equate to the ridiculous 590-600 points demanded to do medicine there. Plenty of British universities were only too happy to take her, and she has now started her medical degree in Manchester. This story started me thinking about the extraordinary ignorance that exists in second-level schools about the possibilities of students doing their undergraduate studies at a university in the other Irish jurisdiction. Some years ago I gave the prize day address at a prominent Northern Catholic grammar school in a town close to the border. This took place in December so I was able to peruse the list of that year’s school-leavers to see to which university these high-achieving young students had gone to. There were over 100 names on the roll of honour, of which just one had gone to a Southern university. It works - or rather doesn’t work - in both directions. A young Dubliner, one of the winners of this year’s Universities Ireland-IBEC-CBI business-sponsored Masters awards, who is beginning a Master’s degree at Queen’s University Belfast, told me earlier this month how struck he had been by how few Southerners there were at Queen’s. This is a far cry from the situation in the mid-nineties, when University of Ulster was attracting 17% of its full-time degree students from the South, and Queen’s around half that figure. The most recent UCAS British university admission figures show the number of students from the Republic taking up places in Northern universities falling from 700 in 2004 to less than half that in 2006. This means that there is now virtually no cross-fertilisation of education and culture represented by a flow of Southern students into Northern Ireland. At the very least, that is a great pity at a time when ‘learning to live together on the island’ is one of the mantras of a successful, but yet to be bedded down, peace process. Similarly in the South, Higher Education Authority figures show that fewer than 1% of higher education students come from Northern Ireland. Even at Trinity College Dublin, which until the 1970s used to be a place bright Northern Ireland students from a Protestant background looked to as a real alternative to Oxford, Cambridge and other leading British universities, the proportion of students from Northern Ireland is now down to 3%. In the 1990s the main reason Southern students went North was the absence of fees and the ability to bring their maintenance grants with them. The availability of funding appears not to be the open sesame to cross-border student flows it once was. That is Universities Ireland’s experience anyway. The business-sponsored Masters bursaries referred to earlier, offering students a ?20,000 award for a year’s study in the other Irish jurisdiction, are among the most generous anywhere in Britain and Ireland for postgraduate students at this level. Yet despite a very significant level of publicity around the nine universities, there were precisely 38 applications for these bursaries this year, half a dozen of them so sub-standard as not to warrant serious consideration. So what are the chill factors stopping Irish students considering universities across the border? We know that Northern universities, unlike their British counterparts over the water, do not need to recruit undergraduates in the South because of the UK Government’s cap on student numbers in Northern Ireland. But with the boom of recent years in the number of undergraduate applications now at an end, the same cannot be said for Southern universities. And at a time of increasing student fees in the North, does not the ‘free fees’ regime in the South now not make the South’s universities even marginally attractive to Northerners? Or is a key chill factor here the very high cost of living - and in particular the cost of student accommodation - in cities like Dublin and Galway? If any readers of this column have any answers to this conundrum, this writer would be most interested to hear them. Andy Pollak P.S. Readers may be interested to know that the phenomenon of second level students travelling across borders to go to school is not restricted to Ireland. The French newspaper Libération carried an article recently on a government report which showed that 7,000 French pupils from the border region adjoining Belgium now go to Belgian schools. Would the two Departments of Education perhaps co-operate on a survey to find out what the equivalent level is in the Irish border region?Andy Pollak @ 03:31 PM
Andy
You have posed a very important question, and with your understanding of cross border University education you have given us the answer, which is all to do with finance.
It is only in the last six or seven years that students realised there was a price to pay and that they would have to carry the cost.
They are prepared to compromise with their first choice of University and course and seek a cost effective degree.Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 05:30 PMFascinating post - interesting about TCD and absence of Northern students. I’ve read anecdotally about Ulster prods favouring Scottish Unis - but I’ve met quite a few in London fairly recently.
I tell you one thing though I’d love to have me time again and do me degree in QUB - those Botanic girls…. Wonderful!Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 05:32 PMMy son had seriously considered Trinity for this year, and may still do so next year. He went to the Abbey CBS in Newry, and I think 4 or more of his classmates went to University in Dublin.
The deciding factor for me as a parent was the availability and cost of accommodation. To be fair, my son had a very good offer of same, but I know of school leavers from this area who had to decline their place in Dublin due to lack of accommodation.
Just another point: 4 A levels are pretty standard, at least in the schools around here. It certainly isnt unheard of to have kids taking 5 or more subjects at A level, particularly if they aspire to Medicine or Vet Science in the ROI
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 05:39 PM4As at A level would be enough to warrant an offer for medicine in any of the Southern Medical Schools and many from my neck of the woods (Derry) do apply but fewer go than was the case 20 or 30 years ago for a variety of reasons.
The application system CAO is very different to UCAS so if you want to go South you have to master this system and try to work out the value of your Northern qualifications. It’s easier just to stick with the familiar UCAS.
CAO operates much later than UCAS so it’s nerve wracking to let UCAS offers go in the hope that you will be OK in the South
For some courses CAO operates the random factor to select among candidates on the same points, probably fair but scary
Accom, as missfitz mentions, probably the biggest factor. Be a student in Dublin and live in Athlone or spend a humungous fortune for something in Dublin
Cheap flights to UK & Scotland. I can travel from Derry to Cambridge in less time than I can travel to Dublin and for little more expense. English and Scottish Universities are so much closer than they used to be.
All these factors make it simply easier not to go South rather than any firm decision that you don’t want to go or that you’re not wanted down there.
PS If you are from the North and really want to go to TCD, contact Shane Ross, one of the TCD Senators, it’s one of his big things, trying to get Northerners in. That fact alone would be enough to put me off the idea, but each to his own.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 06:14 PMActually Lamh dearg, you reminded me of the horrors we had here over the summer.
The CAO system was completely mystifying to us. We submitted everything as requested, but found they lost results and were very difficult to deal with. UCAS on the other hand appears much more user friendly. The child did his Oxford exams yesterday, and we shall see how it goes. But you are correct, for ease of use, I definitely think CAO leaves a lot to be desired.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 06:18 PMBlame the quality of the A-Level. As far as I’m aware, the points given for each A-Level was recently downgraded in comparison to a leaving cert and the points system is still based on the old ‘standard’ three A-levels. This means the maximum points you can get with A-Levels is 510, not enough for some courses.
This is not the fault of the CAO. They are having to deal with a shambles of an exam system where the quality is dropping gradually over time. If students lose out, it’s down to the dodgy UK exam system.
The logical thing to do would be to reduce the points of an A-Level to 150 each and count four of them but they would really need to stabilize first. I wouldn’t have my kids do A-Levels.
Point of interest: The QUB school of pharmacy won’t accept leaving certs at all without an A-Level in chemistry even though the leaving cert is good enough for Trinity. This means in effect that there are almost no southeners in the QUB pharmacy course.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 06:30 PMExcuse my ignorance, but isn’t this compatability of qualifications question between different countries of the EU one of the things that the Bologna(?)Process is supposed to have addressed?
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 07:09 PMAndy, ‘learning to live together on the island’ is one of the mantras promoted - by nationalists. The 1998 Agreement dealt with the relationships across the UK and Ireland.
QUB joined the then UCCA in the late 60s so that opened up a whole new vista for students from here. Magee College, whose students had formerly completed their degrees at Trinity, became part of the University of Ulster around the same time. These changes may have had a significant effect.
I remember visiting Edinburgh University in the early 80s. I dropped into the Admissions Office and asked why a student from Coleraine who’d obtained 4As hadn’t even got an offer from EU’s medical faculty. I can’t remember the details exactly but they operated a quota system; they retained about 100 places for Scottish students and offered 40 places to the rest of the world - NI had got 4.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 07:23 PMoneill, the Bologna process is more to do with standardizing 3rd level qualifications rather than 2nd level qualifications which we are discussing here.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 07:28 PMLack of accommodation put me off Trinity. Plus a lot of GB universities are very good. Scotland is losing its draw, more are now going to England.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 08:07 PMSlightly off topic but my parents wanted me to go to Cambridge. I was not clever enough and had to go to QUB instead. I would not get into my old course now with my A level grades, Actually not getting what I wanted in my A levels and rather letting down my parents was the best thing which could have happened to me.
It made me realise that I was not actually that clever and that I would have to work very, very hard at university. It rapidly became a habit and although I did not enjoy university much I did get a decent degree (better than my intellegence merited) and have done fairly well out of it.
I also went to QUB a rather politically liberal and naive child (I was really no more than a child) more fond of church and my horse than anything else. And QUB, the unionist association and the Student’s union have helped make me a member of the prodiban. Oh dear I guess people like missfitz will probably not want their kids to go to QUB now.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 08:19 PMTurgon
You mean that Queens made you less liberal?
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 08:32 PMTurgon
Not exactly sure what you are implying? Both my daughters are QUB graduates, and I am also a Queens graduate. I had been doing my MA there but switched to the OU for financial reasons.Why do you think I would be against Queens?
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 08:36 PMThe quality of teaching is one of the most important things about a university; will the tutors inspire you? Will you be taught by research leaders? Queens is better than the Scots universities in this sense but Oxford and Cambridge - as well as LSE, Imperial etc, really are excellent.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 08:48 PMWe put a lot of faith in the guides to the Universities, but we also spent a lot of time (and money) trailing around different campuses to see what felt right. I think my son didnt want to follow all the women in the family to Queens! I must say, we were in St Andrew’s recently, and I loved it. What a spectacular setting for a university
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 08:54 PMmissfitz,
Not implying anything against you at all just that I became a lot less liberal at Queens. I thought you might be horrified that university deliberalised me. No insult to you at all and if I offended you at all my apologies. it was more an attempt at humour. Sorry I do not do humour very well.slug,
Very definitely QUB made me a lot less liberal. I was brought up in South Londonderry in a very predominantly Protestant area. My parents had a fair number of Catholic friends but they were all middle class and liberal as were my parents.When I went to QUB I discovered that there were actually people who supported the IRA, really thought killing Prods was a good idea. That sort of thing along with the QUB Student’s union changed me. In terms of re-liberalising me after QUB; marrying a girl from South Fermanagh did not help. She is extremely gentle, kind, sweet, pretty and as unionist as the day is long.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 09:32 PMTurgon
I know what you mean although I didn’t go to Queens. I was all very liberal and had a lot of sympathy for the nationalist position until such time as I encountered bigoted attitudes against uninoists among nationalists. Then I realised that there was a lot more to NI history than just unionist discrimination against Catholics (which is what I was socialised into thinking by the liberal education offered at my grammar school).
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 09:38 PMThe above discussions reinforce my agreement with Gerry Anderson about the value of leaving NI if only for a few years. See a bit of the world, especially a bit where your religion isn’t the defining characteristic of your life.
Avoid Queens not because there is anything wrong with it as a university but because it is in an abnormal society. Go to England, Scotland or the South and have your horizons expanded.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 10:17 PMPS missfitz
All the best with the Oxford Entrance procedure, what college has he picked?
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 10:24 PMLamh dearg, it’s the scale of those not returning that would worry me. I am SURE it has changed since my day - which, ok, is now 13 years ago. My school did a follow-up programme for a few years on a “where are you now?” basis, for what reason I have no idea.
Anyway, three years after leaving college, I got one of these wee letters asking after us, so I phoned and got talking to the teacher who was looking after it. Obviously as time goes on there were less replies, so this was the last year they were doing MY year at the school. Oh yes, he said, your year was particularly bad. There were 144 lads, and at the end of the first year of counting, only 6 were left in Northern Ireland. At the time of calling (3 years AFTER your average 3 year course was over) IIRC he said this had gone up to 12.
Personally I know very few of them came back. This was a Protesant grammar school. Wonder what the up-to-date scientific research on the out-migration would say about the situation now? Just a thought. Sorry to go O.T.
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 10:27 PMI imagine it is no better now. I have 3 children all in England and I don’t expect any of them to return. Why would they? My eldest came home after finishing her degree and went to the Employment exchange and was advised to apply for a job cleaning toilets. She now has a good fulfilling job in London.
We owe this province nothing. If our brightest can find a better life elsewhere, good luck to them
Posted by on Nov 01, 2007 @ 10:44 PMIt was ever thus, back in the mid 1980’s when we were applying for universities, our first term in upper sixth was spent poring over the prospectuses of British universities. We were a Catholic grammar school in a fervently nationalist area and yet the students would be discussing earnestly the relative merits of Aberystwyth (sp) versus Newcastle.
Eventually the boys settled on the towns where their favourite teams played, 40 went to Manchester (the same as Queens), Liverpool and Glasgow were the next most popular. We were all fully versed in the ways of UCCA selection and spent weeks preparing our applications.
Then in February the careers master said, “Oh by the way here’s the forms for CAO (I think that was the name of the Irish system) if anyone’s interested”, none of my friends were remotely interested in going to university in ” the south”. On a whim I applied to Trinity and then never gave it a second thought until my results came out and I was let down for Edinburgh and Birmingham. Suddenly my Trinity fall back was all I had.
Imagine, one of the finest universities in the English speaking world, four hours drive down the road from my front door and it was my “consolation prize” for missing out on Birmingham!
The only other guy from my school who went there also did so as a second best, incredible. Only two other boys from my year went south one to UCG and another to UCD. Mind you as the years wore on more Derry wans started coming down but funnily enough they were all girls, it seemed that the boys just didn’t even see Dublin on their radar.
Posted by on Nov 02, 2007 @ 12:07 AMLD-
He applied to Brasenose College. Bit of an English language genius.Picking up on another idea in this thread, I wouldn’t really expect my son to come here if he goes away got college. He has seen his sisters struggle to find work with their degrees, and I imagine if he gets an opportunity in London or wherever, he will stay there.
That in itself says a lot about us, and reminds me of my own economic plight in the 80’s when I left Dublin. I am not sure that there is an Ulster Tiger in sight though, but wouldnt that be a nice thought
Posted by on Nov 02, 2007 @ 07:42 AMmissfitz, Brasenose is nice and central. Best of luck to him.
Posted by on Nov 02, 2007 @ 08:09 AM” I am not sure that there is an Ulster Tiger in sight though, but wouldnt that be a nice thought “
If there is to be one it will have to be focussed on Greater Belfast. Its in the cities where the economic booms happen. Where is this Varney character and his report?
Posted by on Nov 02, 2007 @ 08:16 AM
