There was a time in certain urban pubs when a barman, confronted with uproar and misbehaviour, might throw his eyes to the heavens before muttering a single, all-revealing word to the older and allegedly wiser inmates: “Stewdents”...

Thousands of tales have been wagged over the decades. Each of our university cities had their circuits, their haunts, their characters and their stories – and students were part of the tapestry. The bohemian quarters where they lived lent themselves to riotous assemblies late at night, especially when students from Northern Ireland had just collected their grants.

In those now far-off days, a student might wind up in a city bar drinking with Luke Kelly, Liam O’Flaherty or Philip Lynott, or with learned diplomats and judges on the batter, each riffing on poetry, history, song and story. You might have witnessed Patrick Kavanagh and Brendan Behan facing off. You might even have been part of the company when a newly-appointed UCD professor allegedly relieved himself into a pint glass and ceremonially handed it to the barman, declaring “I’ve been drinking your piss for the last four hours, now have a pint of mine!”

So, once upon a time, being a student was a licence to shed your old skin, to begin to find out who you really are, to let craziness and irresponsibility burble to the surface for a while, to shake off the dead hand of the parish, to discover yourself and others. A period of glowing, gilded, garrulous freedom between the life of youth and the chains of office…

Not an Elite Pursuit

Decades on, things are different. Towns and cities have changed. So too have bars and laws and accommodation – and students. Look at the numbers. A hundred years ago, there were only 23,031 students in secondary education in Ireland (14,224 boys and 8,807 girls). This doubled by 1950 (still more males) but only 4,500 sat for the Leaving Certificate and only 1,100 undergraduate degrees and just 116 postgraduate degrees were awarded. If they weren’t an elite, who was?

And now? Well, over 90% of those born in 2000 finished second-level education and close to 70% of those went on to higher education. According to the 2016 Census, over 40% of the population hold a third-level qualification, three times as many as in 1991. Over 56% of those aged between 15 and 39 hold a third-level qualification compared with 19% of those aged over 65.

So, today’s students stay in education for much longer than their parents, grandparents and great grandparents. And many, adopting the mantra of lifelong learning, return later in life too. According to the Central Statistics Office, numbers completing their education aged 22 or older rose from 111,867 in 1991 to 421,374 in April 2006 and 593,827 in 2016.

The numbers dispel any notion that higher education in Ireland in 2019 is an elite pursuit. Yet, we can’t ignore the glaring social and regional disparities. For example, according to the CSO, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown had the highest percentage of persons with a third level qualification at 61.1 per cent. Galway City (with 55.2%) had the second highest rate. This was followed by Dublin City and Fingal (both 48.7%). Longford and Wexford had the lowest percentage with a third level qualification, both at 32.5 per cent, followed by Offaly (32.7%).

There have been important changes as regards gender too. While only a quarter of higher education students in 1950 were female, by 2009 56.8% of all third-level graduates in Ireland were women. By 2016, 43.2 per cent of the female population were educated to third level compared with 40.7 per cent of males.

Lack of Affordable Accommodation

As these changes have unfolded has the idea of being a student changed? Has the purpose? Have behaviours? The answer, almost certainly, is yes. As participation has increased, Irish people have become more instrumental, more pragmatic, more employment-focused. Higher education is assumed: it’s a key part of the so-called national conversation, and CAO processes garner widespread media coverage.

Leaving Cert students are encouraged to work towards their dream course – and their dream job. But the idea of a dream isn’t contested. Is it what will garner gasps on Instagram?

Meanwhile, the institutions struggle with technological developments and overcrowding. Lecturers lament that too many students display a sense of entitlement, an over-commitment to social media, a short attention span, surprisingly low levels of literacy and poor organisation, presentation and writing skills. They blame the second level process for this as well as the lack of a robust apprenticeship system – though this, thankfully, is undergoing a major expansion at present.

Students aren’t slow to respond, identifying serious shortcomings and citing improvements that should happen at individual teaching and institutional levels. In truth, students and institutions are often talking about the same issues but from different perspectives. Both acknowledge the challenges: the lack of affordable accommodation, the numbers pressure, the need to cater for ever more complex needs and demands, and the challenge of maintaining student and teacher mental health in a pressure cooker environment.

Toilets Have Greatly Improved

Clearly, it’s a positive start to acknowledge mental health needs, but the services that follow must be of high quality and consistent whatever the setting. Likewise, tackling misogyny, homophobia and racism goes far beyond pieties: it demands consistent action. In this there has been significant progress, hand-in-hand. But there has been slippage too as trolls and far right online activists insinuate themselves into a range of discourses.

These challenges, and others such as climate change, extend far beyond the walls of education institutions. But what they offer to students is the chance to become part of the solution, to engage in action free of the constraints that later life may bring, to be the noisy conscience of the nation on social justice, climate change and sexual politics and to, as Joe Hill is said to have said, arise, arise and organise.

In shedding the old skin and becoming something new, today’s stewdents should milk their years of study to have as good a time as possible – but they should also reach out into the world beyond. It will be theirs soon enough.

And no need to piss in a pint jar. One certainty amid the turmoil is that toilets have greatly improved over the past hundred years!