»» €132 spent monthly on socialising, alcohol and cigarettes, claims report
»» Books “causing significant financial strain”

According to the Sunday Independent, a government report is set to reveal that grant-aided students spend three times more a month on alcohol and socialising than they do on academic resources. Despite this, students questioned by researchers considered books to be causing the most financial difficulties. “Books were cited by most students as causing significant and sometimes unexpected financial strain”, the report will explain.
The report, commissioned by the Economic and Social Report Institute, will show that students spend €132 a month on socialising, and only €30 a month on books and other study aids. One source quoted in the Independent suggests that “students who receive the full maintenance grant of €3’250 may be spending more than a third of this on alcohol and cigarettes.”
Over the nine month college year, students on the full grant receive just under €400 a month. 25 percent of third-level students receive financial assistance, which is intended to encourage students from low-income families to progress into third level education. A student questioned by the survey said that “everyone in my class goes out once or twice a week. I’d say socialising is the biggest expense outside trying to actually live.”
The Sunday Independent’s report quoted “an education figure”, who argued that the research, which is based on figures from 2007, proved “this constant moaning about the college grant is just a joke. They have been found out here. It’s time now to stop doing their degrees by going on the beer, get off the booze bus, and get back to the lecture hall with their sandwiches in their pockets”.
The publication of the report follows a cut of the grant by five percent in December’s budget, after a year in which many grants remained unpaid until midway through the college year- some have still not received their initial payments.
Professor von Prondzynski of DCU had this to say about the cut. “Asking students from wealthier families to contribute to the cost of their studies was seen as politically undesirable; cutting the support for poorer students was not such a problem.” Peter Mannion of the USI echoed these sentiments. “These new student grant restrictions will seriously decrease the potential for thousands of students around Ireland to make the leap into Further and Higher Education. Mature students, in particular, were badly hit by yesterday’s Budget. Many of these students have children and will also feel the effects of the cuts in child benefit. How can people be encouraged to enter, or re-enter, education if at every turn the access is being made more difficult? It will be impossible to tempt the unemployed back to education, if financially it becomes unbearable to continue with further or higher education.”
The Independent’s report has prompted some discussion amongst students and professors. Liam Delaney, an Economics lecturer in UCD, posted this on Twitter. “Student grants, like any expenditure, need to be looked at. Irish Indo attempts to whip up anti-student sentiment not a good way to do this.” Students on popular form Boards.ie admitted that in some cases the report’s argument was fair, although accepting the unfairness of generalizing. One student explained that “not a cent of my grant is spent on books. It all goes to my landlord and the ESB”.