Leaving Cert students who secure more than 500 CAO points in the June exam will be paid €1,000 by the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) if they register for some of their business degree courses.
The controversial move reflects the fierce competition between third-level colleges for high-achieving students. The initiative is being paid for by funds generated by DIT's business faculty, including its training and professional development programmes. DIT stressed that no public funds are being used to support the new move. "It is being funded entirely by our own activities," a spokeswoman said.
Only about 10 per cent of Leaving Cert students achieve more than 500 points. Students would need very high grades in six Leaving Cert subjects to accumulate this total. The average Leaving Cert points score is about 300.
Last night Mr James Wrynn, of the business faculty at DIT, said the €1,000 initiative was designed to ensure a good mix of students on DIT's business courses. This year students needed more than 400 points to secure places on most degree courses in business at the college.
Last night a DIT spokeswoman said the college would be examining whether to introduce a similar incentive for other courses. Virtually all colleges now offer a range of incentives to high-achieving students, including sports scholarships and guarantees of accommodation. But the offer of a cash scholarship is still unusual.
Last year Dublin City University was criticised when it offered preferential accommodation to students securing more than 500 Leaving Cert points. The offer is still available , despite some criticism that the university was manipulating CAO choices by students.
DIT is the largest third-level college in the State, with more than 10,000 full-time students and 4,000 apprentices. More than 6,000 also take part-time courses at the college, which has locations around Dublin city.
Moves are in train to transfer all the college's facilities to a new €100 million campus at Grangegorman in north Dublin. This should be fully operational by 2012.
The €1,000 scholarship will apply to the following degree courses; marketing, retail and services management, information systems development, business and management and transport and logistics.
