Education and opportunity - A pressing challenge

This morning 56,990 young adults get their Leaving Certificate results. For a minority — barely more than 11,000 — this rite of passage marks and end, for the moment at least, of their formal education. 

However, most, 45,700 students, have applied for places at third-level institutions. The great majority will be offered one though far fewer will, if recent trends are repeated, complete any third-level course.

The scale of social change this represents, say from these students’ grandparents schooldays where only a privileged minority could hope to get to college, cannot be overstated. This huge change has educational and social consequences as the ESRI pointed out this week.

As university president after university president has warned the huge increase in numbers brings its own difficulties and stretches resources to an almost unsustainable degree. Some have argued too that accommodating so many students has meant that standards must be realigned to recognise a far wider range of academic abilities.

There are issues around resources too and it is hard to think that, despite registration fees, that this arrangement is sustainable in the longer term, especially if academic standards are to be maintained. It would be a travesty if this great opening of opportunity was diminshed because standards could not be at least protected. Resolving this huge social and political conundrum is an unavoidable challenge.