BRIAN MOONEY'S ADVICE CENTRE:IF YOU ARE one of the 68,000 applicants to the CAO this year, you have recently receiving a letter listing the courses that you applied for last autumn. You have been given the opportunity to change your course choices if you so wish. You have until July 1st to complete this process.

If you are in the final weeks of preparation for your Leaving Certificate, I would advise you to remain focused on your studies; don't be distracted by the range of course options that are on offer to you. After the Leaving, you will still have time to change your CAO options, if you wish.

You will probably find that your mind will be less cluttered once the stress of your examinations is out the way.

The economic backdrop has changed for the worse since you submitted your initial CAO application. You career prospects and those of current and future third-level graduates have been transformed by the economic collapse we are currently experiencing. You may find that the grounds on which you initially decided to commit the next three to four years of your life to third-level study no longer exist.

You may have presumed that the costs of attending college would be lower that they are now. Registration fees are now twice what they were last year. The reintroduction of college fees and/or a student loan system is a probability. You may also have banked on securing a part-time job to fund yourself through college, which may be very difficult to secure in the current economic climate.

On the other hand, accommodation will be considerably cheaper, now that the level of rents have declined sharply in most towns and cities. All of these changes need to be factored into your analysis of career choice options, prior to deciding how to proceed.

My advice would be to ask the following questions:

Will my choice of degree contribute towards my becoming a more skilled and competitive candidate when I enter the employment market in three to four years' time?

What are my existing interests, aptitudes and skills, and how can the CAO options available to me build on those strengths?

Nobody can predict how the way the world economy will emerge from the current collapse, but it is absolutely certain that you will stand the best chance of securing sustainable employment in that new world order if you continue to build on and strengthen your existing basket of skills and talents. Continuing to engage in education and training, offers by far the best opportunity to build on your current CV, and strengthen your employment prospects.

TALK BACK...

The response of people to the current economic crisis is similar to the five stage grieving process as outlined by Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her seminal work On Death and Dying (1969) - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

The radical changes in lifestyle that we will have to accept as a consequence of the economic crisis have not yet been taken on board by most people. Banks are under severe pressure from some of their customersto give them loans to sustain their existing lifestyle choices.

One of these choices is to send their children to private fee-paying schools. This choice has come to be seen as an entitlement for many parents, even though their combined incomes can no longer fund the fees for such schools. These parents are unprepared even to consider the option of switching their children to the non fee-paying sector, even if such schools exist in their locality.

The fee-paying schools themselves are facing a crisis as many parents simply stop paying fees for children currently in second-level education.

To have allowed the free market to operate in the education sector has been a major failure on the part of recent governments. Entire areas of Dublin - and in the rest of the State to a lesser extent - have seen the closure of non fee-paying schools as the numbers of pupils dropped to unsustainable levels. These schools have now been sold off by the religious orders and are no longer available to serve their communities. Where are the children in those communities, who can no longer afford to attend fee-paying schools now going to receive their education?

Brian Mooney is a guidance counsellor at Oatlands College, Dublin and a former president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors