Next week will see about 60,000 young adults receive an offer to study at an Irish higher education institution through the Central Applications Office (CAO).
Receiving an offer is an important milestone and achievement in the lives of these students. For some, it will mark the beginning of a transformative experience that will profoundly affect the course of their lives, including where and with whom they live and work.
Although this system of allocating places at higher education institutions is regarded as transparent and meritocratic by many, it also contributes to levels of social mobility that are more stagnant than most people realise.
Statistics from the Higher Education Authority (HEA) show that just two in five school leavers from areas classified as disadvantaged went on to higher education in 2023 compared with almost nine in 10 of those from affluent areas.
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In other words, a child living in Dublin’s Blackrock was more than twice as likely to progress from secondary to higher education as a child living in Ballyfermot.
And there is good evidence to suggest that higher education leads to higher earnings.
Research commissioned by the Irish Universities Association estimated that, on average, Irish graduates earned between a fifth and a third more than similar non-graduates.
However, this is likely to understate the effect that higher education can have on earnings inequality because students from affluent areas are even more likely to study the programmes whose graduates have the highest earnings.
For example, statistics from the CSO show that graduates of business, administration and law from Trinity College Dublin and UCD earned on average about €90,000 10 years after graduation. Affluent students are five to 10 times more likely to study these prestigious programmes in medicine, ICT and social sciences.
Not only does this amplify earnings inequality between those from affluent and disadvantaged areas, but it means some of our higher education institutions are far less socioeconomically diverse than the population that support and fund them.
A key source of the inequality this system amplifies comes from its use of Leaving Certificate results as the primary means for determining who studies what and where.
This is because how well students do in the Leaving Cert is closely tied to their socioeconomic background.
Work I have done with colleagues at Trinity College Dublin has shown that children whose parents are near the top of the income distribution obtain on average about 100 more points in the Leaving Cert than children whose parents are near the bottom of the income distribution.
In effect, the primacy given to Leaving Cert results by the CAO system ensures that it is the most affluent students who receive offers to study subjects with good earnings prospects at prestigious institutions.
While some may see such a system as meritocratic, that is difficult to reconcile with research which shows that socioeconomic gaps in cognitive skills open up early in childhood and persist into later life.
[ Child poverty fell by less than 1% last year, Government progress report showsOpens in new window ]
This – along with other evidence – suggests policy has an important role to play in shaping how wide these socioeconomic gaps grow.
Successive governments have long recognised this responsibility, with the current National Access Plan for higher education aiming to ensure the student body “reflects the diversity and social mix of Ireland’s population”.
Yet most public debate about measures to achieve this ambition focus on potential reductions to the student contribution charge from its current rate of €2,500 per year.
This focus is misguided given that very few low-income students are liable for the contribution charge, with the vast majority already having it covered by the student grant paid by Susi.
Instead, more weight should be placed on enhancing the generosity of this grant, which – while increased in recent budgets – has withered over time, as well as to simplifying the arduous application process.
There is scope, too, for an expansion of the Higher Education Access Route – which offers places at reduced points to school leavers from disadvantaged backgrounds – and of initiatives like the Trinity Access Programme.
Institutions and interventions have a role in helping to create more integrated communities, where low- and high-income families are more likely to interact
However, given the early age that gaps in test scores open up, reducing disparities in who attends higher education is likely to require interventions targeted much earlier in the life cycle.
From this perspective, the introduction of a Deis Plus scheme providing additional teachers, support staff and grant funding to disadvantaged primary and secondary schools is to be welcomed, although its scale is relatively small.
Research presented at a conference in Dublin this week by Harvard University economist Raj Chetty suggests greater attention should be given to policies that enhance social capital: the strength of our relationships and communities.
Using data on 21 billion friendships from Facebook, his work shows that economic mobility is higher in communities with more cross-class interactions.
This points to an important role for institutions and interventions that help create more integrated communities, where low- and high-income families are more likely to interact.
One institution that arguably already plays such a role is the GAA through its focus on local clubs. These provide an important forum for both children and adults from very different backgrounds to train and play together.
By contrast, our current system of admissions to higher education is designed to do almost the opposite: sorting students into colleges and courses that are starkly divided by class.
Next week will inevitably hear complaints about the unfairness of some students losing out on places in high demand courses through random selection.
Instead, discussion should focus on the far greater unfairness of a system that is rigged in favour of the comfortable classes.
Barra Roantree is director of the MSc in Economic Policy at Trinity College Dublin
