UCD GRADUATES are losing out to Trinity graduates in jobs and postgraduates places because Trinity allocates more high grades in its final exams.
This claim, made in a recent article in UCD's University Observer, is borne out in relation to law students by an analysis of HEA data carried out by E&L (see table). This shows that Trinity law graduates were almost six times more likely to score a first 1.6 per cent of UCD law students' who got a degree in 1992/93 obtained a first, compared to 9.5 per cent in Trinity.
The proportion of law students obtaining a first or a second was 52.4 per cent in UCD, but in Trinity it was no less than 96.8 per cent.
"If you have a first or a 2.1 from a good university, most employers are going to take that at face value. The Civil Service, for instance, insist on a 2.1 and don't take into consideration the fact that Trinity give out more of them, says Malcolm Byrne, development officer with UCD students' union.
However in most faculties other than law, UCD gives more firsts than Trinity. There are many interesting variations revealed in the table above. The proportion of firsts in engineering averages about 20 per cent in the different colleges compare this to the 1 to 3 per cent who obtain a first in law (outside Trinity) or medicine. In UCC, there were no firsts in medicine.
The proportion of firsts in arts ranged between 0.8 per cent in Maynooth to 3.7 per cent in UCC. Grades in commerce tend to be higher, ranging up to 11.5 per cent in UCD. And there is a big disparity in high grades in science, from just 4.1 per cent in Maynooth to 16.4 per cent in UCD.
Overall, UCD its law department excepted seems to hand out the highest proportion of firsts. In commerce, science, engineering and medicine, the college ranks at or near the top of the seven universities.
Trinity attributes its better performance in law to the fact that the course lasts four years and not three as in UCD. But the Trinity arts degree is also longer, yet the proportion of firsts in this subject is similar in both colleges.
Differences in the ability off students coming into college may also explain some of the differences for example, the entry requirements for Maynooth are lower and so are the proportion of firsts in arts and science. Yet, the entry points for medicine at UCD are much higher than for engineering, but the proportion of firsts is much higher in engineering.
In many ways, the fact that UCD students believe they are at a disadvantage matters as much as whether they actually are.
