Vacant places on offer in 150 college courses
The courses – 61 honours (level 8) degrees and 89 level 7 or 6 programmes – are also open for application from prospective students who are not among the record 77,628 who already applied for college places up to July. The Central Applications Office (CAO) website began listing the courses at midday yesterday, with degrees in business, computing and some engineering spheres prominent, despite entry standards in many other courses within these disciplines up on last year in cut-off points for Monday’s Round 1 offers.
The “vacant places” courses are mostly ones which have not yet been filled due to low application levels or poor rates of acceptance in the 18 hours after offers went up on the website.
The CAO said last night that there had been no repeat of the trouble which prevented thousands of applicants from finding out if they had been offered a college place until about lunchtime on Monday. The malicious attack of the website from an unknown source will be assessed in more detail after the second round of offers is made next Thursday week, when a decision is also likely to be made whether to report the incident to gardaí.
CAO operations manager Joseph O’Grady said the priority is to process offers and acceptances on behalf of students and colleges.
“We plan to conduct a full investigation into this attack in due course and will continue monitoring the system to ensure continuity of online services. Once we have completed our assessment we will decide how to progress this issue,” he said.
Meanwhile, as figures emerged showing 9% of graduates from Irish third level colleges last year were working overseas this spring, University of Limerick president Professor Don Barry told a conferring ceremony the figure was one-in-eight for the college’s class of 2009. But another 41% have found jobs at home compared to the 36% national average, meaning more than half of all UL’s 2009 graduates were working nine months after qualification, compared to a 45% rate across all higher education institutions.
“There is no doubt but that current employment challenges make taking the next step more difficult for Ireland’s 2010 graduates,” he said.
The national figures being finalised by the Higher Education Authority are based on information collected by all third level colleges from their graduates each year.
A report on those who qualified in 2008 showed that a disproportionate level of graduates with jobs were working in Dublin and the biggest numbers were earning between €21,000 to €25,000 a year.
