Leaving Cert results indicator for college course completion

THIRD-LEVEL students with the lowest Leaving Certificate results, particularly in maths, are most likely to drop out of college.

The finding emerged from the first significant study of dropout and retention rates in higher education, which shows almost one in six students don’t go beyond their first year.

There is wide variation between different institutions, as just 9% of university entrants drop out before second year, but almost one in four fail to get past the first year of level 6 and 7 (higher certificate and ordinary degree) courses in institutes of technology.