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Universities should limit the number of students allowed to defer occupying their places amid concerns that many may choose to take a gap year due to Covid-19 restrictions.
Most of the tuition at tertiary institutions will take place remotely this year and some higher education figures are concerned that students will differ for fear of losing the traditional college experience.
UCD and Trinity College Dublin are among many universities that have restrictions in place in the next academic year to limit the number of students they can defer.
UCD said it will put a 5 percent cap on the number of students in a class they can defer, while Trinity said it will limit deferrals to ensure there are enough spots for new applicants the following year.
An unpublished report from the Higher Education Authority compiled earlier this year warned that a significant number of students would likely be deferred due to the pandemic.
Points to enter many courses rose to record levels on the foot of grade inflation on this year’s Certificate of License, figures from the Central Applications Office (CAO) show. More than 50,000 college applicants received course offers on Friday and have until Wednesday to decide whether or not to accept them.
Overall, points increased in approximately two-thirds of honors or level eight courses this year.
600 point excess
At the university level, the points rose on average between 20 and 35 points. A total of seven courses have surpassed the previous all-time high of 600 points.
Some of the biggest individual point increases compared to last year were over 100 points. They include pharmaceutical science from TU Dublin (+116 points) and computer science with one language (+113 points), law and French at UCC (+89 points) and paramedical studies at the University of Limerick (+79 points).
About 78 percent of level eight college applicants received an offer from one of their top three options.
Meanwhile, there was continued anger among students and their parents at high-performing schools who feel they have lost under the new grading process calculated for Leaving Cert students.
One routine school, Bruce College in Cork, said its students’ grades in various subjects dropped 13 to 26 percent.
However, Higher Education Minister Simon Harris said the Government will not reopen the Leaving Cert rating system.
‘Unravel the whole system’
“If you pull a thread here, you risk undoing the entire system. . . If I’m suddenly allowed to take a teacher’s grade in a subject and apply it to college, why can’t anyone else do the same? ” he said.
“Nobody sat in the Department of Education and said ‘Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of the Bachelor’s Certificate?’ That is not what happened. What happened was that there was no sure way to do the exams this year. “
For those who were disappointed, he said there was an opportunity to sit one or more assignments in November.
Mr. Harris said that removing the “school profile” from the calculated grades was a “brave decision” but the “right decision.” If there had not been a standardization process, Harris said there would have been “very high” grade inflation.
He said that 2,255 additional places this year had allowed more students to enter the third level than ever.
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