Children of top earners dominate courses

THE children of top-earning medical, legal and health professionals disproportionately continue to dominate entry to university courses in those fields, despite widening of access in other study areas.

Figures from the Higher Education Authority (HEA), which oversees access policies in third-level colleges, show that almost one-in-three first-year medical school students in medicine last autumn came from professional family backgrounds, such as doctors, solicitors, barristers, engineers and pharmacists.

When combined with those whose parents were teachers, nurses, lab or IT technicians, senior civil servants and other lower professionals, the figure rises to just under half of all entrants, even though these two socioeconomic groups account for just 15% of the national population and less than a quarter of all university entrants last year.