The Higher Education Authority's report, The Social Background of Higher Education Entrants, presents a depressingly familiar picture. Despite some modest gains - and the abolition of college tuition fees - third level education in this State remains largely the preserve of the middle and upper classes.
Only 1.9 per cent of those entering universities in 1998 were from a home where the main earner was unskilled; almost 40 per cent were children of employers, managers and higher professionals. The fact that the children of large farmers still manage to take a disproportionate share of students' assistance underpins the inequality at the heart of the system.
The social division is not quite so stark in the institutes of technology sector, where there is much healthier representation by students drawn from the skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled. But the pattern presented by Professor Patrick Clancy and Ms Joy Wall in their report is, nonetheless, a damning one.
Other research by the HEA indicates that the under-representation of various social groups tends to be evident across most educational systems despite different policy initiatives. But the evidence would suggest that the Republic has been much less successful in opening up participation to third-level education than other Western states. There are huge groups of people in our major cities for whom higher education is never considered an option.
It may be that the problem will get worse before it gets better as the economic boom tempts students from the most socially disadvantaged homes into the workforce. In his perceptive foreword to the report, Dr Don Thornhill, the HEA chairman writes: "In considering the development of appropriate policies and practices, we need to have regard to the possibility that a changing labour market will have a greater effect on the progression of the less well-off to higher education because of the greater attraction of paid work."
Some progress has been made. At the very least, every third-level institution in the State is now acutely aware of its responsibilities to the poorer sector of society. The majority now operate some kind of access programme. Some, like that at the Dublin Institute of Technology, are innovative and practical. But, in truth, there is more than a small element of tokenism about the efforts of some other colleges.
The Minister for Education, Dr Woods, has recently established an expert group to examine the wider question of access to third-level. The group hopes to formulate new strategies to address the problem. But there is no short-term panacea. The real reason for educational disadvantage can be traced back to chronic under-investment at secondary and, more especially, at primary level. Today, despite the economic boom, many poorer children are still being taught in overcrowded schools without proper learning and other supports. The State and various third-level colleges can intervene usefully with school-leavers. But the most concentrated efforts must begin at a much earlier stage in the educational cycle.