PRESIDENT'S LOG:Recently I was at a dinner and was sitting with several businesspeople. Well, to be honest, they were all businessmen, but that's a subject for another time, writes FERDINAND VON PRONDZYNSKI

One topic that prompted a fair amount of debate was whether university standards in Ireland had dropped. There was some differences of opinion, but then one of my fellow diners made a comment that prompted general agreement. He said he couldn’t be sure whether standards were slipping, but he was inclined to believe they were.

Why? Because almost none of the graduates he employed just out of university could write grammatically correct English. There was much nodding of heads.

I suppose this is part of a broader debate on whether our education system has been “dumbing down”. The accusation often leveled at us is that grades in both the Leaving Cert and in final university examinations have been going up over the years, without any visible improvement in the quality of the students themselves. The implication is that we are experiencing a major bout of grade inflation, which is undermining the integrity of the Irish education system.

Researchers from the Institute of Technology in Tralee have conducted a study on educational standards in Ireland and reported that there was considerable grade inflation in Irish universities and colleges. Their evidence? In 1994 the percentage of first-class honours awarded across the universities was 7 per cent. By 2005 it was 17 per cent.

What shouild we to make of this? Should we conclude that if grades are rising, standards must be falling? Or can the results be explained some other way? And

if standards are falling, what should we do to arrest that trend?

I have spoken to a number of academics on the subject, and have come across a variety of views. Some lecturers argue that the trend in grades simply reflects improved performance over time, driven in particular by the growing determination of young people to maximize their Leaving Cert results.

Some do believe that the quality of students coming into third level has deteriorated; or perhaps more accurately, the quality of what they have

learned at secondary school has deteriorated. Some do not see evidence of this at all, but wonder about the appropriateness of the second-level syllabus, and conclude that students are not less talented or even less good at achieving merited results, but that what is expected of them for the Leaving Cert is less and less appropriate for third-level studies.

One theme runs through these conversations: that the system we have set up for secondary students encourages them to focus on cramming in order to maximize their CAO points, but that this process leads them to adopt learning methods, and focus on subject matter, that will be entirely counter-productive once they start their university programmes.

In other words, the Leaving Cert system in its final year encourages students to do all the wrong things, and then gives them grades based on their ability to do these wrong things. If that assessment is right, we may not be seeing grade inflation (by which I mean the awarding of unmerited results), but rather the awarding of grades on the basis of inappropriate criteria.

And what about grades awarded to third-level students? Here those I have spoken to argue vehemently that the grades are almost always merited, and they point to the fact that the standards are assessed and supervised by independent external examiners.

But an underlying question put to us might be whether we really have an objective sense of standards at third level. Over the past decade the growth of quality assurance systems has had the effect of focusing on teaching and learning methods and processes, while perhaps neglecting a discussion of what constitutes an appropriate standard. We have come to equate quality with process rather than content. As a result, we are not well equipped to judge whether standards are rising or falling, because we don’t really have a sense of how that should be measured.

So what do I conclude?

First, the discussion about grade inflation is unsatisfactory because it is based on, at best, incomplete evidence. Just because many students achieve higher results doesn’t mean they don’t deserve them; we need a better analysis than that.

Secondly, let’s have the analysis. The integrity of our education system is more important than almost anything else to our future. So let’s get the evidence, and then let us make sure that we have an education that is appropriate to our times – and that it is among the best in the world.

• Ferdinand von Prondzynski is president of Dublin City University