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Education Minister Richard Bruton today welcomed the Report of the Expert Group on Future Funding for Higher Education.

As committed to in the Programme for Government, the report will now be forwarded to the Oireachtas Committee for comprehensive examination and discussion, in an effort to build a consensus on a plan for the future direction of the funding model for higher education in Ireland.

The report concludes that current funding arrangements are not sufficient and it calls for the articulation and implementation of a clear funding strategy for the sector that will deliver a robust and steady base of funding to sustain the system into the future. It details a number of funding options for achieving this.

Examples of targets that Minister Bruton believes should be adopted include: 

•        Provide for 50,000 upskilling and reskilling places over the next 5 years to meet identified skills gaps in the economy and to support an increase in Lifelong Learning
•        Increase participation in higher education by the most disadvantaged socio economic groups by over 7 percentage points
•        Increase the numbers of entrants studying on a flexible basis (online, part-time) by 25%
•        Increase the number of students undertaking a work placement or work based project as part of their course by 25%
•        Increase new research enrolments by 30%

The Minister said

Over recent years, the higher education sector responded well to massively increased student numbers in the context of tightened budgets. This has been a great achievement but is not sustainable, and we are now starting to see difficulties emerge in achieving public policy goals in areas like skills and disadvantage.

And in the coming decade the demographic bulge will start to come through to higher education, with numbers expected to be nearly 30% higher by 2030.

If we are to deal with these issues, and if we are to fund higher education to the level necessary to help deal with these massive social and economic challenges, we are going to have to look at new funding models. This is a major challenge and I believe we need to try to find a broad consensus on how to address it. The report published today is a massive first step on this journey and I am very grateful to Peter Cassells and all members of the Group who put in massive effort to produce this major piece of work.

Read the report here.