Preferences for College Courses in Ireland

Preferences for college courses have been discussed before on this blog. In one post on 'Matching Undergraduate Students to Their Interests', we asked "how closely are first year undergraduates matched to the course that they wanted to do when they filled out their CAO form?" A number of problems are possible:

- there is only partial information available until the student enters the college course of their choice

- students may choose “high points” courses simply because they are “high points” courses (and not true preferences); albeit a slightly different issue it is also worth reading another post that was on this blog before (see here) about priority matching schemes and the clearinghouse for university admissions in Germany

- another problem is exemplified by the applicant who decides to look only at courses within a certain points band. For example, let us say that a student anticipates getting 340 points. "He or she will scour the lists of last year's cut-off points, picking courses that "cost" 340 points or thereabouts, almost regardless of the content of the course" (see end of this Irish Independent article)

An article from Science mentioned on this blog before describes a potential solution to preference misalignmnet - at least in the specific subject domain of science. The article describes how some American universities have been trying to match science students to their interests: "Linking Student Interests to Science Curricula". A course called “The Chemistry and Biology of Everyday Life” (CBEL) was developed using students’ interests in everyday life as the starting point for instruction. Of course, the American higher education system is largely non-specialised at entry to under-graduate level (see a previous post about this here), which allows for initiatives such as CBEL to be more effective. So what is to be done in the Irish case?

One recent initiative was the announcement that from 2009 onwards, Leaving Certificate points will count for less with regard to how places on medicine courses are allocated. Under the new system, there is a points threshold (480) at which a candidate becomes eligible to sit an aptitude test. While a working party has reviewed international practice on the best aptitude test available, there is still some disadvantage in dispensing with a pure points-based market (or clearing-house) for college places.

The disadvantage is the lack of complete anonymity which the clearing-house system provides. The Central Applications Office (CAO) was was established in Ireland in 1976 to streamline and co-ordinate student applications for university places (Coolahan, 1991). The most salient feature of the CAO points system however, is that it discriminates among applicants on an anonymous basis. A voluntary code is sufficient to guarantee that the position of a particular course in an applicant’s order of preference has no bearing on assessment for admission to that course (CAO, 2006).

Of course, there is a trade-off between complete anonymity and the problems which accompany the clearing-house system. It has already been mentioned that students may choose “high points” courses simply because they are “high points” courses (and not true preferences). But there is also the need to grind out a high-points performance if one wants to do a high-demand course such as law or medicine. Much has been made of the "points race" in recent years and the grind-school phenomenon which de-values a rounded education and puts sole emphasis on the stressful pursuit of points-score maximisation. Read comments from the HEA here about the points race being far from over.

Last August, the Irish Independent published an analysis of Leaving Certificate points, prepared by its own statistician, over the years 1992 (when the current points scale was introduced) until 2007 (see story here). This showed that the numbers of candidates scoring 450 points or higher (that is, the total band of 450 to 600) rose from 6.2pc in 1992 to 18.3pc in 2007. Of course, there are many other issues that get raised in this debate such as whether Leaving Certificate courses are being dumbed down, or whether the number of places for medicine or law should be increased. One thing we do now is that while total net CAO acceptances increased from 26,762 in 1992 to 38,967 in 2006, the total number of courses on offer increased from 244 to 378 (see page 4 of this CAO Board of Directors' Report for 2006).

There is some good news in all of this for UCD at least. Figures for CAO applications show that UCD first preferences are up 5.2% on 2007. A total of 7,073 students gave UCD their first preference compared to 6,724 in 2007. In addition, this reflects a strong performance in Science – particularly omnibus entry where first preferences were up almost 30%. See story here.