One in four Irish adults under the age of 65 hold a third level qualification - a 5 per cent increase in just three years, it emerged today.
A quarter of 15-64 year-olds have sat and passed college exams, compared to just a fifth in 2002, new figures revealed.
Women are top of the class with 373,000 obtaining third-level grades while 325,000 men followed suit.
When 15-24 year-olds — the age group most likely to be still in education are excluded — just over 28 per cent of 25-64 year-olds held a college qualification in 2005, a rise of 3.5 per cent since 2002.
The Central Statistics Office revealed almost 40 per cent of all 25-34 year-olds held a third level qualification in 2005 compared to just over 34 per cent three years previously.
The number of people doing well at secondary school is also on the increase.
Over 61 per cent of all persons aged 15-64 attained education levels of higher secondary level or above in 2005 — an increase of 4 per cent on 2002.
This rise was evident for both men and women with the male rate increasing from 55 per cent to 58.5 per cent between 2002 and 2005 and the female rate increasing from 60.2 per cent to 64.5 per cent over the same period.
The number of people leaving education after primary school is falling with 16 per cent of 15-64 year-olds in 2005 having done so compared to 19.5 per cent in 2002.
A total of 76 per cent of 25-64 year-olds were in the labour force in 2005.
The participation rate of those with a third level degree or above was 90.4 per cent compared to just 52.6 per cent for people who left school after primary level.
Conversely, the unemployment rate for those aged 25-64 with a degree or above was just 1.8 per cent compared with 7.4 per cent of primary school leavers.
Almost 12 per cent of 18-24 year-olds surveyed in 2005 left education during secondary school.
Men are more likely to do so than their female counterparts with 14.5 per cent of males and 9.3 per cent of women defined as early school leavers.
Almost 57 per cent of the 54,600 early school leavers were in employment while a little over 16 per cent were unemployed and the remaining 27 per cent described themselves as not economically active.
Early school leavers are three times more likely to be unemployed than others in the same age group.
PA