College Choice/Brian Mooney: Now that the CAO points for each course have arrived, most students' attention will turn to what they have been offered and the implications of the courses on offer for their future career.
There is a widespread perception that this is a make-or- break moment for students which will determine their career for the rest of their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. The course you have been offered by post today is but the first tentative step in building your future career.
Recent research has shown that most people leaving second level education today will have seven major career moves in their working lives and many smaller moves within each career area. Students should regard what is facing them today as an option.
As with all journeys, the unexpected can and will happen, so treat the choice or choices available to you now as merely a first step.
With the growth in higher education sectors over the past decade, there has never been more course and career options available to students. The opportunities that exist today, even for those with quite modest Leaving Certificates, is endless.
Students can progress from one-year PLC programmes right up to doctorate and post- doctorate level in their chosen area of interest. The anxiety that is caused by the perception that there is an intense points race, in which only a small minority succeed, is false. Even students who have not received a satisfactory offer today can go on to build highly successful careers by using the wide range of educational opportunities available, as outlined above.
As seen by the reactions to the CAO offers yesterday, the perception of intense competition is caused mainly by the spotlight focused on a handful of medical and paramedical courses which have a very limited number of places.
For the vast majority of students today, the offers contained in the envelope from the CAO will see them succeeding in securing one of their top three choices.
Arts, commerce and law:
Students seeking places in these disciplines are delighted with the reduction in points across the board which has seen many students acquire their desired place, who might have thought last Wednesday that they had missed by 10 to 20 points.
Medicine:
As reported in The Irish Times, the recent report by Prof Patrick Fottrell highlights the inadequate provision of publicly funded training places in medicine. The Government imposed a cap of 308 places in 1978, available through the CAO application process, to all EU applicants, including Irish students. This creates a bottleneck of applicants, which distorts the reality of the CAO application process, in which most students achieve one of their top three choices.
As previously reported, the inadequacy of the number of publicly funded places in the Republic is shown by the fact that the medical schools in Northern Ireland are expanding the number of places on offer from 220 to 260 this coming September. The North has a population of 1.4 million, while the Republic has a population three times that size.
The problem here is further exacerbated by the fact, that our five medical schools have had no difficulty-attracting fee-paying non-EU students, paying up to €34,000 per year.
They claim that these students' fees enable them to train the Irish student doctors, given that the fee paid by the department per EU student is about a quarter of the non-EU fee.
Therefore, it is not simply a fact of the Government deciding to increase the number of places available to Irish students, as the colleges would not want to see a reduction in their overall income from medical students, which would happen if they reduced the percentage of non EU students from 50 to 25, as recommended by the Fottrell report.
But who should pay?
Behind this whole dilemma is the issue of who should pay the cost of expensive university programmes, the taxpayer, or the students who will benefit financially from the medical/ paramedical training provided.
It is an issue which requires urgent attention if we are to have an adequate supply of appropriately qualified medical professionals in the years to come. Given the roasting the Government got from its middle-class support base, when Noel Dempsey raised this issue in 2003, it is hard to see an early solution to this problem.
The very distorting effect that this small group of medical and paramedical programmes creates for the entire college application process is evidenced by the reaction yesterday, to the increase in the points required for these courses.
Medicine in Trinity now requires 590 points, an almost unobtainable figure, achieved by a little over 100 students nationwide.
These courses further distort the bigger picture, due to the fact that of the 800-plus places, available through the CAO, in medicine, veterinary, dentistry and pharmacy, a quarter goes to students repeating the Leaving Certificate for at least the second time.
A further quarter of the places is secured by students presenting three A levels, mainly from Northern Ireland. This leaves a little over 500 places available, to this year's cohort of Leaving Certificate students.
The Irish Times Helpline:
The pressure on students seeking places on very high points courses distorts the relative calm of the vast majority of students who secured one of their top choices yesterday.
But there is real stress and this was apparent in the flood of calls on the helpline yesterday.
Tomorrow: The issues raised on the Helpline.
Brian Mooney's column on CAO options will appear daily until Friday
- You can email Brian Mooney on bmooney@irish-times.ie
- Are you confident you will secure your CAO option? Join the discussion forum on Skoool.ie, the award-winning education website developed by The Irish Times, AIB and Intel.