CAO applications: Recovery refocuses attention on construction

The inexorable trend in CAO applicants' choices towards honours degree – or level eight – courses continues in 2016. There has been a 2 per cent increase in the numbers listing honours programmes as their first choice and a corresponding decrease in first-choice applications to ordinary degree and higher certificate programmes.

Prospective students are being influenced in their choices by the strongly recovering economy. The biggest increase in demand for places is in the construction-related programmes where student interest collapsed in 2009.

Applications are up 20 per cent this year, which is good news for the DIT where many of these programmes are offered and other institutes of technology across the State.

There has been an 8.5 per cent increase in demand for nursing places, which will see CAO points requirement rise considerably, unless the HSE, the Health Service Authority, rescinds the cut of more than 300 places they imposed on the colleges in 2009 as a budgetary measure. If the HSE allowed the colleges to reinstate these places, points requirements would fall this year.

The strength of the economic recovery and the confidence engendered in CAO applicants is reflected in the increased demand for places in engineering/technology (up 7 per cent), architecture (up 6 per cent), law (up 6 per cent), business/commerce (up 5 per cent) and pharmacy (up 4 per cent).

Entry points requirement are likely to increase for most programmes offered by colleges in these disciplines when the CAO offers places to applicants on August 22nd.

Even though CAO applicants are making their course choices based on a strongly recovering economy, they need to be mindful that securing a place in a prestigious faculty and graduating with an honours degree does not in itself guarantee you entry to a profession.

Cutbacks

There are many graduates in disciplines such as physiotherapy who have not been able to secure a job because of HSE cutbacks. Law graduates, for example, have to secure traineeships with a firm of solicitors before they can enter Blackhall Place to complete their studies and many struggle to secure these places, particularly outside Dublin.

The biggest loss of interest among students this year is in agriculture programmes, where applications have fallen back 26 per cent on 2015.

Interest in such courses increased substantially after the economic crash in 2009, but the reductions in the incomes earned by those in the agricultural sector appears to be discouraging young people from considering farming as a profession.

Applications for places in human medicine, veterinary science and dentistry are all down this year, but not by amounts which will see points fall in any significant manner.

The good news for prospective students here is that points are unlikely to rise. The fact that CAO applicants for medicine were provided with their Hpat result in late June before making their final course choices enabled many students to re-evaluate their 1st choice as medicine.

By far the most popular choice for students remains arts, which attracted 16,095 applications in 2016, down 3.2 per cent on 2015. Points requirements for all arts courses will remain at 2015 levels or even drop slightly.

Science and primary school teaching application numbers are both up 1.4 per cent on last year, with points remaining constant or increasing slightly.