Disadvantaged student views are ‘widespread’, believes support group

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.

Higher Education Access and Disability (AHEAD), an access and disability support network today hit back at Murphy’s refutation, claiming that he did indeed claim that students from disadvantaged backgrounds were academically weaker than their non-disadvantaged counterparts, something which Murphy has strenuously denied since the comments made headlines a few weeks ago.

“To paraphrase, he [Murphy] suggests that educating and supporting students with disabilities is a costly exercise that we can’t afford in the current climate as it steals from resources available to the talented 5% of top academic students who the country needs in order to be creative and build our future,” the organization’s executive director, Ann Heelan, told the Irish Examiner.

“These views expose what Dr Murphy and indeed many others in education really think and reveal the assumptions that lie behind the mask of equality. The assumption is that students with disability are less able than other students and are not expected to be found amongst the 5% of gifted students in higher education,” he told the paper.

Murphy’s remarks at the Cork Chamber of Commerce’s annual Christmas business breakfast has sparked a bitter war of attrition between Murphy and staff angry at his comments.

Jonathan O’Brien of Sinn Féin labelled the remarks ‘arrogant and elitist’, Independent Councillor Mick Flinn said that Murphy should ‘retract or resign’ in a letter to the Examiner, while a flurry of letters in the Irish Times drew scorn on the President’s remarks from several quarters. The letters-sending culminated with thirty-four staff at UCC’s School of Applied Social Studies penning an open letter to the President expressing their disdain for his remarks.

Murphy yesterday, however, chose to hit back at his critics.

In an interview with the Irish Examiner he achieved the local media of deliberately ‘mischievous’ reporting, while denying that his remarks had not been intended to infer that students from disadvantaged backgrounds were inherently weaker academically.

”I categorically reject the inference you drew from my speech that students ‘assisted through socially disadvantaged, physical disability and lifelong learning support programmes’ are ‘academically weaker’,” the country’s highest paid university president told the paper yesterday.