CAO 2022: Record numbers get college offers - but is it sustainable?

Champagne corks popped in many homes shortly after 2pm on Thursday as thousands of students learned that they had secured one of their top three course preferences.

In all, the CAO made offers to more than 57,000 applicants, up more than 2,000 on last year, a new record.

Just over half (54 per cent) of students secured their first preference, while a sizeable majority (82 per cent) of students managed to get one of their top-three course preferences.

But there was also heartbreak in some homes. Universities were forced to use random selection across about dozens of courses — about 50 in all — this year. Many have again been in high points areas such as medicine, dentistry and management science.

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Points for entry to some of these courses reached maximum points — 625. It means some students have again, incredibly, missed out on their first preference courses, despite securing top grades.

[ CAO 2022: More than half of students get their first course preference despite high points ]

[ CAO 2022: Six takeaways from this year’s college offers ]

Why? It is down the distorting effect of grade inflation. Students grades are now so high that applicants with stellar grades are “bunching” towards the top and cannot easily be differentiated.

To give a sense of how the scale of this, consider the following. In 2019, before the pandemic, about 200 students secured 625 points. This year, the number on 625 points grew to more than 1,122, a fourfold increase.

There is also a distorting effect at the lower end.

Students with lower, but inflated, grades are getting into demanding courses which they would not in normal times. While some of these students may flourish, there are real risks of others struggling or dropping out.

Whether it is a coincidence or not, some universities are reporting a worrying rise in failure rates among students who joined in the past two years with higher than normal grades.

If a re-run is to avoided next year, Minister for Norma Foley will be need to address grade inflation for next year’s Leaving Cert cohort.

While inflating grades is both easy and politically popular, deflating them is much more challenging. Inevitably, one cohort of students will be disadvantaged over another if their points are lowered.

However, keeping grades at the current level is also unsustainable. Most agree that it risks the future integrity of Leaving Cert grades and their validity for both universities and employers.

More broadly, there are also questions over the sustainability of an ever-expanding higher education system.

With a record number of CAO offers this year, more school-leavers than ever look set to progress to third level this year.

In fact, Ireland sends more school leavers to university — in excess of 60 per cent — than almost any other EU member state. The figure is about twice that of Germany.

It might sound like a badge of honour, however, the expansion of higher level in recent years is largely at the expense of vocational routes.

For example, the addition of about 5,000 new higher education places in the past two years — aimed at taking some of the heat out of the CAO points race — led to a drop of about 30 per cent in the number of school-leavers opting for post-Leaving Cert (PLC) courses.

Yet, the further education and training sector is crucial in helping to fill urgent skills gaps such those required to retrofit homes as part of the campaign to meet climate-change targets.

It presents a dilemma for Simon Harris, the Minister for Further and Higher Education.

On the one hand he is racing across secondary schools to highlight apprenticeships and ensure school leavers are exposed to further education options on the CAO’s website.

Yet, on the other, there is pressure from school-leavers intent on going to higher education who want CAO points to be kept in check.

A growing number of higher education observers argue that we need a much more balanced tertiary — further and higher education — system to provide for the wide range of skills that our society and economy needs.

Some have floated a bold policy idea: capping the numbers going to higher education. Other say vocational routes will continue to be seen as second-best by many parents and students until employers like Google start hiring from the sector.

There are differing views — but what most agree on is that the current path of grade inflation and expansion of higher education is not sustainable in the long run.