By: Kristin Snapp

Point Park students can often be seen expressing their annoyance with prospective student tours on campus, but for students at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, students encounter thousands of tourists on their campus on a daily basis.

The Old Library of Trinity College is today’s home of The Book of Kells, a medieval manuscript from the 9th century details the life of Jesus Christ. The book serves as one of the main tourist attractions in Dublin, often creating a line that spans the perimeter of Library Square.

“It’s easily the worst part of attending this school,” Tadhg O Miochain, 20, of Dublin, said.

Although the tourists might create a traffic jam on campus, Miochain, a second-year astrophysics student says it’s a small price to pay when the cost to attend the college is so low.

Irish students attending Trinity College pay just $3,000 per year. European students pay $7,000, and students outside of the European Union pay $20,000 – which is still lower than many universities in the U.S., regardless of whether they’re public or private institutions. These figures are the same for Dublin City University (DCU), located further on the outskirts of the city, whereas Trinity College is in the heart of downtown Dublin.

Interestingly enough, Miochain called their $3,000 payment an activity fee. In the States, the activity fee is a small percentage of a student’s tuition, but at Trinity College, the cost of attending goes directly into various activities that students can become involved in – most of which are academically related, like the astrophysics club.

There is no Greek Life at Dublin’s universities, either.

“Well, there’s an unofficial one – a bunch of students got together and decided they were going to call themselves a fraternity and have sweethearts and whatnot, but no one else recognizes them as that,” Miochain said. “It’s just something they call themselves, the rest of us think it’s pretty ridiculous.”

At DCU, there is no presence of even a pretend fraternity.

“Greek life?!,” Orla Heatley, a second-year Law and Politics student at DCU asked with a laugh. “No, we’re lucky if we even get apartments.”

DCU’s further location from the city center means that there is less happening surrounding the campus, and most of the nearby housing, according to Heatley, is currently occupied by families – which is not ideal for college students.
“We get grants and scholarships to help us pay the cost of going here, but it’s really competitive to find student housing, and a lot of students end up paying high costs to live in the housing nearby the university,” Heatley said.

The student housing situation at Trinity College is less competitive, as the majority of the on-campus housing is filled by seniors only. Freshmen and sophomores are not permitted to live on campus, and juniors may, but they rarely do.

“Only fourth-year students live on campus,” Miochain said. “Third-year students can, but nobody ever does. It’s like a rite of passage for being a fourth-year student to live on-campus.”

As for student life, aside from an abundance of clubs to join, it’s only slightly different from American Universities. Trinity College boasts a student enrollment similar to Pitt’s – about 20,000 students. There are pubs both on campus and surrounding campus, but Miochain says most students prefer to buy beer themselves and sit outside “once the tourists go home for the night.”