If you are not a male graduate of a full-time business or engineering course or do not have an accountancy qualification you have only a one-in-430 chance of becoming a business or political leader in Ireland.
That is the finding of a survey carried out by the National College of Ireland - formerly the National College of Industrial Relations - of 65 leaders interviewed in the Irish Times's Director's Chair column. They included 39 chief executive officers, eight chairmen, three government ministers and 10 company directors.
Sixty per cent of those who held a third-level qualification had done courses in business, accountancy or economics, with another 14.5 per cent holding an engineering qualification. Of the sample, 10.4 per cent held arts degrees, with law and the sciences accounting for 12.6 per cent each. Only 7.5 per cent had no third-level qualifications, and 7.5 per cent had taken an undergraduate course on a part-time basis.
Prof Joyce O'Connor, president of the National College of Ireland, which introduced its new name and logo at its Ranelagh headquarters yesterday, said the findings were disturbing. They represented roughly the same odds against part-time students rising to the top as against Jamaica winning the World Cup.
She expressed concern that "those who for various reasons cannot afford to invest three or four years of their lives in full-time educational programmes do not seem to be represented in this important group of people in Irish society. While the traditional model of education served its purpose in the past, the future of our increasingly knowledge-based society makes it imperative that tomorrow's leaders are drawn from a wider pool of talent."
She said the findings pointed to the growing need for colleges like the National College of Ireland, which provides full-time and part-time courses from foundation to postgraduate level at more than 40 off-campus centres. "The leaders of tomorrow need to be enterprising, self-determined and, most importantly, continually learning. Everyone should have an equal chance to become tomorrow's leaders," she said.
Inaugurating the new college name yesterday, the President, Mrs McAleese, said: "The more people we can include, the more skills and talents we put at the disposal of our community. Until we have everybody in education, and everybody's talents being fully utilised, we are still flying on one wing."