“It started in 1990 with just six students from Ballymun. Now 21 years later, DCU’s Access programme is the oldest in the country and it’s thriving: 170 students entered the university through the programme in September, the largest cohort yet …” (more)
[Grainne Faller, Irish Times, 21 February]
“Sentiments similar to those echoed by UCC President Dr Michael Murphy at his controversial Cork Chamber of Commerce address are widespread within higher education, a prominent support organization has claimed …” (more)
[Daniel O'Carroll, StudentNews.ie, 12 January]
“The president of University College Cork, Dr Michael Murphy, has responded to widespread criticism of his suggestions that some educational supports for disadvantaged and disabled students be diverted to more gifted students …” (more)
[Niall Murray, Irish Examiner, 11 January]
“UCC president Dr Michael Murphy has denounced as ‘absurd’ the notion that he could have described socially disadvantaged, disabled and mature students as ‘academically weaker’ …” (more)
[Niall Murray, Irish Examiner, 11 January]
“The comments by the UCC president did nothing to enhance the institution’s five-star status. As someone who progressed through schools (and indeed the university) located in a disadvantaged area, I don’t believe I held anyone back …” (more)
[Mick Finn, Irish Examiner, 30 December]
“UCC President Michael Murphy was yesterday branded an ‘elitist’ over remarks made during a speech to the Cork Chamber of Commerce …” (more)
[Donal MacHenry, StudentNews.ie, 24 December]
“More than two dozen academics have branded as ‘outrageous’ the president of UCC’s comment that the pressure of providing access for disadvantaged students was triggering an exodus of top students to study abroad …” (more)
[Eoin English, Irish Examiner, 24 December]
“Sir, – We were deeply concerned by the comments attributed to UCC President Dr Michael Murphy concerning Access students, which were made during a keynote address to the Cork Chamber of Commerce on December 20th …” (more)
[Martin J Power and others, Irish Times, 23 December]
“Pressure to provide college places for disadvantaged students has triggered an exodus of Ireland’s brightest school-leavers to study abroad, a leading university president has warned …” (more)
[Niall Murray, Irish Examiner, 21 December]
“Universal access to education is the mark of a civilised society and, in this country, considerable progress has been made in that fraught, divisive but empowering area over recent decades …” (more)
[Irish Examiner, 21 December]
“I can’t honestly say my student years were the glory days but they were a formative period: useful, enlightening, conducive to maturity and life enhancing – sometimes even because of what I learned in the lecture halls. This time apart between school and work was an exceptional apprenticeship for life …” (more)
[Independent, 18 August]
“As higher education massification continues across much of the world, and as assumptions about the appropriate proportion of the population that should have a university degree change further, questions are also being asked about whether in such circumstances the traditional higher education quality can be maintained …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 8 August]
“British universities are required to submit plans to the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) to widen participation of disadvantaged groups which OFFA must agree to. For an example of one of these, Oxford, see here …” (more)
[Kevin Denny: Economics more-or-less, 14 July]
“My paper on the non-effect of fee abolition in Ireland emphasized the socio-economic gradient in secondary school attainment: low SES means low points and therefore a low probability of progressing to university and a low probability of getting into the more prestigious courses. Fees are a side-issue, at best. This problem is not unique to Ireland, of course …” (more)
[Kevin Denny: Economics more-or-less, 9 July]
“I am regularly surprised to find that quite a few academics feel a sense of nostalgia for academic life in the 1970s or 1980s. Of course there were fewer bureaucratic irritants back then and a greater sense of academic autonomy. As regards public funding, it was more or less the same as now. I remember something in Trinity College Dublin (where I was a lecturer in the 1980s) actually called the Cuts Committee …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, Irish Times, 26 April]
“The teachers were dedicated. The students were bright, curious and highly capable. Prof Patrick Prendergast, recently elected as Trinity College’s 44th Provost, was impressed with what he saw during his visit to this inner-city Dublin school a few months ago. But most students here were unlikely to ever pass through the gates of a university campus …” (more)
[Peter Maguire, Irish Times, 23 April]
“Whatever country you are in, and whatever higher education system you are reviewing (unless you’ve found an obscure one I am not familiar with), there are serious issues regarding the extent to which the student body reflects in any real sense the population of the country from which it is drawn …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 20 April]
“Children of non-EU migrants have the same rights as their Irish-born peers to primary and secondary education, but are at a disadvantage if they succeed in getting to third level …” (more)
[Jamie Smyth, Irish Times, 2 April]
“A blind law-school graduate won a legal victory today in her fight to take two legal exams with help from assistive software. It’s the latest in a series of court battles over issues of technology accessibility …” (more)
[Marc Parry, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4 January]
“… But it is also important to remember that these advances are possible on the whole not because the state has facilitated it, but because the institutions themselves have raised or set aside sums to provide the special support that these students need …” (more)
[Ferdinand von Prondzynski, University Blog, 2 September]
