Article in the Irish Times re: CAO points

claire h

In The Irish Times today...

CAO points requirement for many courses set to fall
Seán Flynn, Education Editor

CAO points requirements for some of the most popular degree courses in arts and business are set to fall significantly this year.

With Leaving Cert results due on Wednesday, education sources say the points required for a range of computer and related technology courses will also fall.

It is expected that CAO points for a general arts degree will fall from about 380 points to 360 in some colleges. An average 20-point fall is also expected in most business courses. But, in a reversal of the overall trend, points for medicine and related areas are expected to increase after strong demand for places on these courses.

The expected decline in college points for most courses comes after the number applying to the CAO fell for the first time this year from 62,500 to 60,000. Overall, applications to the seven universities are down by 5 per cent.

In some colleges, applications for computer and engineering courses are down by over 10 per cent. This is very good news for students, but less encouraging for the Government and industry, which have been seeking to rekindle declining student interest in these key areas.

Admissions offices from third-level colleges are due to meet in Galway next Friday to consider the Leaving results. CAO points figures for the coming academic year will be published next Monday.

CAO figures which show an unprecedented decline in applications include:

r Arts and social science (down 3 per cent)

r Business (down 7 per cent)

r Agriculture (down 5 per cent).

These areas could see a corresponding decline in points requirements. Admission officers expect an overall decline of at least 2 per cent across the board and a significantly greater decline in areas such as arts and computers.

Sources say that, while the new figures would make little difference to high-points courses such as medicine and law, they could have a dramatic impact on those courses which have struggled to fill places in recent years.

These include computer and IT courses in some institutes of technology. As it is, many of the institutes now accept "all qualified applicants" for many courses provided they have the minimum entry requirement, usually five passes in the Leaving Cert exam.

Broadly, CAO points will tumble for most courses because fewer students are chasing more and more courses. As one admission officer put it: "Supply is much higher than demand."

In recent years there has been a boom in the number of courses on offer to students. Almost 800 courses are available in more than 40 third-level colleges. This compares to just 50 courses in seven colleges less than 20 years ago.

This year is seen as the first when the sharp decline in the numbers taking the Leaving Cert will be reflected in lower CAO points. Until now, the decline in school-leavers has been offset by an increase in mature students.

Applications for medicine are continuing to buck the overall trend. Demand for places on medicine courses have risen by 14 per cent, pharmacy by 9 per cent and healthcare by 7 per cent.

Kappar

Could this fall be realated to a fall in children born in 1985/6. I think maybe future years will see less people applying.

Suaimhneach

Wow, my first and second choices are arts and buisness.

leeroybrown

Not at all surprising. As Kappar mentions, this is related to the steady drop off in the birth rate that started in the mid 80's. Interestingly, (if I remember correctly) the birth rate has gradually increased since the mid to late 90's. Amazing what economic prosperity can do.

Luckily for Ireland, the average age of our population is still quite young and our birth rate is significantly higher than most other developed European countries. This means that we should be able to continue the provision of a skilled/educated workforce for the foreseeable future and defer the problem of an ageing/retiring population that Europe is beginning to see.

As for the dropoff in particular courses:

Professional degrees (medicine, pharmacy, law ...) will always do well as they're an almost guaranteed career opportunity. Computer and Engineering courses are naturally down as there are a lot less jobs than there were and more will be offshored, and to be honest the average Engineering/IT graduate would have been better off doing something else given the current (albeit recovering) market. Business is probably suffering from the percieved decline of the economy.

Another thing that could have affected the application spread is last years points. A noticable reduction in points in one area can often convince people that they can get a course they otherwise wouldn't have applied for.

snickerpuss

Oh dear god let it be true.
Arts is my number one. :eek:

Agent Smith

"Not at all surprising. As Kappar mentions, this is related to the steady drop off in the birth rate that started in the mid 80's. Interestingly, (if I remember correctly) the birth rate has gradually increased since the mid to late 90's. Amazing what economic prosperity can do. "

also, it was around this time that condom's and teh "pill" were made more accessable, hence the decline in birthrate....

Sarunas

claire h wrote:

In The Irish Times today...

[snip]

education sources say the points required for a range of computer and related technology courses will also fall.

[snip]

In some colleges, applications for computer and engineering courses are down by over 10 per cent.

What effect will this have on the people who go to computer courses? I suspect there will be lots of people who newer liked computers or have a slightiest interest going to these courses, because thats the only one the got. Then end up failing or dropping out soon. The points to most computer courses were 300 last year, so do we expect for the people who got 270 to be doing computer programming? Take a look at a base system of an operating system:

http://grappa.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/?cvsroot=dragonfly

Some of this is good news , as my chances getting in to DCU to comp applications increase. But what about people who get in and have no interest in the course? What will happen to them? And how this will drag other people in the same course? These are very serios issues.

Villain

Well most people have never done any computing in Second Level so hence don't know if they will like it. I done a programming and course and was good at it and I scored quite low in my leaving cert as I didn't have an interest in any of the subjects i.e there was no computing. It's very hard for people to know if they will like programming because the majority of people have never experienced it.

Sarunas

But some people are just completely have no interest in computers. Say they turn on one once in a few months, Thats the people i'm talking about. Also it depends on ones attitude, if you like computers, the chances are you already saw some programming and played around with computers a lot. I didnt mean to offend you or any one else. thats the way I saw things.

leeroybrown

I know quite a few people, who did computer related degrees who had absolutely no interest in them. Worse still some hated the area and were fairly crap at it. A lot of them still finished their degrees. They got in to IT/Computers during the boom when every career guidance councellor and parent was saying, "Theres great money and opportunities in IT, don't worry about what's involved. You'll do fine ...".

Sarunas

Yeah, thats probably why I have such an attitude, 'cause most people went in 'cause that was the place to be. But isn't thats why the drop out/failure rate is so high? I remember my career guidance councellor saying that some lecture in some college said something like this "look around you, the person sitting next to you will not be there next year".

As long as I get to the course I want, and not drop out for some stupid reason. I'll be grand (not worrying about the jobs, cause i wanted to do something with computers since an early age, around 10 or so, so im not gonna change to other carrier because of lack of jobs)

Paulmee

I see a bit of a misconception with the term programming.
If you like problem solving then computer science is for you. Programming is not difficult but finding a solution to a problem is.

At least the drop off in computer science applications has hopefully left only those who are interested in comp science there.

Though I am worried at some comp sci courses halfing their points in some instances.

Oh and while im at it I believe a reason why the "bubble burst" was that there was too many in the i.t industry there because it was popular/money was good. This lead to incompetent work which lost projects in some instances.

claire h

See, that's the problem with the points system, it's supply-and-demand. They need to fill the courses so obviously if people aren't applying to one they'll drop the points requirement until they get a full class. Last year Science at UCD was 280 points for that very reason. So you get people who mightn't be able for the academic load that a degree like that brings - generalising of course, but at least something like Science has equivalents on the Leaving Cert syllabus and you'd assume students would have done well in those subjects if they were going for a Science degree - and then possibly dropping out.

But if people want to go for a course that they're not really interested in but think they'll get into just 'cause it doesn't require a huge amount of points - well, that's silly of them. I don't think it's really going to have an effect on the people that are really interested in the course, though. Those people will go on to work hard, because they're interested, and get a good degree and then hopefully go on to gainful employment and live happily ever after.

leeroybrown

I remember looking through the initial fail rates for a first year University IT/Computing degree after the big points fall. I think their Physics subject had a fail rate of over 50% (of a large class). Maths and other scientific/numeric subjects had very high fail rates too. These were the numbers of people having to sit Autumn repeats in individual subjects so you're looking at well in excess of 50% of the year sitting repeat exams. I'm not sure what percentage got through.

Paulmee

In my 2004 computer science degree class there were around 50 graduates from about 100 that started in 2000.
The statistics seem spot on in this case.
Ive been fortunate not having to repeat any subject but in 2nd year there were about 30 people repeating one exam from the 55-60 that took it.

seamus

My own boss said to me that I'm in one of the last IT intakes with a degree that he would take seriously. He reckons that the drop in points and applications will mean that the quality of graduates will be lower in years to come. That's probably unfair for the actually talented people who can now get into and do these courses, but it's the way that employers are thinking.

Paulmee

seamus wrote:

My own boss said to me that I'm in one of the last IT intakes with a degree that he would take seriously. He reckons that the drop in points and applications will mean that the quality of graduates will be lower in years to come. That's probably unfair for the actually talented people who can now get into and do these courses, but it's the way that employers are thinking.

When it comes to a four year degree course I reckon that those who don't want to be there/aren't capable enough dont' make it to the fourth year.

If they do from what Ive seen it takes them 5-6 years to do a four year degree course. I can fully understand how employers would look down on this.

Paulj

There seems to be a lot of rumours goin around...some people saying that there's no jobs in the industry resulting in few people going into IT...others say that because there's so few people going into IT that there will be a massive demand for the people that finish up college in a few years. But at the end of the day it doesn't really matter what people say...if you like the kind of stuff that you'll be doing you probably won't mind putting in too much effort and then you'll excell and get a job etc.etc.

Im doing computer eng. at the moment and as far as i know nearly all my class got Co-op jobs this year, so maybe things aren't looking so bad after all. I haven't seen this 50% failure rate either; fair enough a few people dropped out but not near as many as 50%!

Also maybe ye should consider Computer Engineering as opposed to Comp science...in UL anyway it gives you the option to switch to Electronic Engineering in second year if you want. So you can still do software/programming/problem solving and if you don't like it you still have the whole electronics side of things.(Beware the maths though)

Paulmee

I just finished college in June with a Computer Science degree.
I started work the following week as a software tester. I have no interest in solely testing so I plan to move into the development side of things ASAP.

Ive had about 3 interviews which is ok. There are a lot of applicants for jobs because companies are not recruiting many this year.

Thats the only downside to it but this should not be a reason why someone chooses not to do a degree in a particular area.

I seems these days its the parents who make the decisions...thats for another debate though.