Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science has announced the approval of €105 million for the third-level sector to safely return in September 2021.
The three areas that will funded are student mental health (€3 Mill), support for students in financial difficulty through the Student Assistance Fund (€10 Mill) and support for disadvantaged, vulnerable learners through the Mitigating Educational Disadvantage Fund (€8 Mill).
Minister Harris said, “Those three measures… I hope will make a real and meaningful difference as we try to get our students safely back to college campuses. I know it has been a really tough time but now the vaccine program is open for younger people, so we’re getting there.”
News of this funding has come in the wake of online learning that has been taking place online since March 2020.
Since the beginning of Lockdown in February 2020 there have been reports of students feeling overwhelmed from online learning and that they feel like they’re not getting the full benefit of what they’re paying for their college tuition.
Last year we surveyed over 1,000 students to ask how they feel the pandemic has impacted their mental health. 67% of students said that they are receiving unfair treatment by the Government and 88% of students miss the social aspect of college and as a result it has affected 77% of students’ mental health.