In 2014, the Minister for Education established an Expert Group on Future Funding for Higher Education in response to serious concerns about the adequacy of current funding levels and demographic trends that indicate that funding demands on the exchequer are likely to increase in the coming years. Recently the Departments of Economics, Finance & Accounting, Sociology and Education hosted a one-day conference to help inform the debate on how higher education should be funded.
Several notable international speakers participated, including Sara Goldrick-Rab, an educational sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has written extensively on the issue of higher education funding in the US; economist Claire Crawford of Warwick University and the Institute for Fiscal Studies, who has written several detailed analyses of the UK system; and Bruce Chapman of the Australian National University, whose name is particularly associated with income-contingent student loans, both in terms of his academic research in economics and his role as policy advisor to many governments. Local speakers include Rory O’Donnell of NESC and Delma Byrne (Sociology/Education) of Maynooth University.
Full presentation information now available.