Category: Higher education

Miriam Hederman O’Brien Prize 2017

The presentation of the 2017 Miriam Hederman O’Brien prize awarded by the Foundation for Fiscal Studies will take place on the Monday 2nd October from 8:00 -9:30am in the Grafton Suite, The Westbury Hotel, Dublin 2.

The aim of the prize is to recognise outstanding original work from new contributors in the area of Irish fiscal policy, to promote the study and discussion of matters relating to fiscal, economic and social policy and to reward those who demonstrate exceptional research promise. The prize forms an important part of the Foundation’s overall objective of promoting more widely the study and discussion of matters relating to fiscal, economic and social policy.

The shortlisted papers are shown here and past winners here.

There will be tea / coffee from 8.00 as well as an opportunity to view stands promoting some of the work and applications nominated for the Award.

The event is free but please register in advance to info@fiscal.ie.

Save the date: September 7 – Policy Forum on Higher Education Funding

I am organising a policy conference on the above topic to be held at the RIA on Dawson Street from 9.30-12.30 on Thursday, September 7.

The main focus will be on the potential role of income-contingent student loans in HE funding.

The morning will begin with short presentations by five speakers, including Bruce Chapman (Australian National University), Lorraine Dearden (Institute for Fiscal Studies and University College London), Charles Larkin (Trinity College), Senator Aodhan O Riordain (to be confirmed) and myself. This will be followed by a 60-90 minute discussion session. The event will be chaired by Frances Ruane (ESRI).

I’ll post a detailed programme here when it’s finalized.

Update: Senator O Riordain has confirmed and the final programme is available here.

Recent Research on Income-Contingent Student Loans

(This is a joint post with Darragh Flannery of UL and Kevin Denny of UCD).

Income-contingent loans (ICLs) for students were one of the options proposed by the Cassells Report on Future Higher Education Funding when it was published last year (see here). The topic has been back in the news again in recent weeks because of the dissemination of a paper[1] by Shaen Corbet and Charles Larkin, which claims to show that an ICL could not work in Ireland.

Two of us (Doris and Flannery) have done research directly in the area of ICLs – indeed Doris’s research ended up being used by the Cassells Expert Group to provide illustrations of how an ICL might work in Ireland. We both found, using different data sets and different ICL parameters (income thresholds, repayment rates etc.) that the discounted value of loan repayments would be about 75% of the loan values, even when accounting for graduate emigration.[2] Under these repayment rates, there would be no problem operating an ICL in Ireland.

The third poster (Denny) has written papers on the determinants of participation in higher education (HE), the returns to education and related topics and so has a strong research interest in the effects of funding on access to HE.

We were all surprised by the reports of Larkin and Corbet’s results and so went off to read the paper. This had added interest as the research appears to be influencing policy makers.  Given this context and with apologies for the length of the post, we have decided to make our assessment of it public.

Continue reading “Recent Research on Income-Contingent Student Loans”

Oireachtas Evidence on Income Contingent Loans

Readers may be interested in the evidence given by Aedin Doris, Darragh Flannery, Shaen Corbet and Charlie Larkin on the subject of income contingent loans.

Irish higher education, post Brexit

Two interesting think pieces in the Irish Times today. One by TCD’s Brian Lucey on the challenges and opportunities facing Ireland’s Higher Education sector after Brexit, and another by UCC’s Phillip O’Kane on creating a single International University of Ireland made of the best bits of the higher education landscape. 

The Deparment of Finance and the ESRI have a briefing paper modeling the impact of Brexit on the Irish economy. Their takeaway:

the level of Irish output is permanently below what it otherwise would have been in the absence of BREXIT.

‘Nuff said.