LEFTFIELD:ALTHOUGH I went to university in Dublin, I finished my secondary schooling in Germany. During my last year or two at school, the curriculum was designed to prompt inquiry and analysis. So, for example, I did a project on the impact of new discoveries in physics on theology, and another on the use and abuse of science in the Third Reich.

Then I arrived in Dublin, and found myself sitting among graduates of the Leaving Cert. I very quickly discovered the immense difference between what I had been taught about studying, and the assumptions of first-year Irish students. It was quite an eye-opener. The Irish students were focused on only one thing: what was going to be in the exams. It was really only after a year or so at college that the impact of the Leaving Cert began to fade, and students began to open their minds. Then I became aware that first year at university is a form of remedial teaching to overcome the effects of secondary education.

Since then, things have become considerably worse. As competition for university places became more intense, the Leaving Cert results took on a critical dimension. And as students (and teachers) knew rote learning was the recipe for success, that’s what was done. Generations of students have worked very hard, as the improving results demonstrate, but those results rewarded techniques that fly in the face of good pedagogy: mechanical memorising, and the avoidance of critical inquiry.

All this is made immeasurably worse by the absurd points system operated by the CAO, which pushes students into what are thought to be easy subjects, and then into “using” their points to access those university programmes that require high scores. The points tend to be high not because the subjects are difficult, but because they are socially popular. In fact, the CAO has delivered the bizarre outcome that many of the most difficult subjects require far lower points than comparatively easy ones, so mediocre students are pushed into the most difficult programmes. How crazy is that? We all know learning should be more adventurous than what our young people experience. But we have been unwilling to reform it.

But help may be at hand. First, we have a Minister for Education who genuinely appears to want to address this, and that's not a minor advance. Ruairi Quinn should be given every support in his endeavours. And we now have a report, Entry to Higher Education in the 21st Century, by the excellent Áine Hyland, former vice-president of UCC, which sets out the problems and points to some possible reforms. This report identifies steps that could be taken relatively quickly to improve matters. Many of the solutions identified are in the hands of the universities: stopping early specialisation in the colleges so students have an opportunity to make choices when they are better equipped to do so; lessening the reliance on the Leaving Cert in student admissions by using additional criteria; and looking again at how points are used to allocate students to programmes.

In the latter context, Prof Hyland puts forward an option that I have been proposing since 2003 (and which I repeated earlier this year on these pages): using a lottery system to select students for oversubscribed third-level programmes. I stand by that proposal, which would remove many of the absurdities of the present system and more evenly distribute students between courses.

But such proposals will get a lot of resistance from vested interests, including parents. Now the Minister and the colleges must stand up to that resistance.

Ferdinand Von Prondzynski is Principal, Robert Gordon University, Scotland