As 50,000 students prepare to make their CAO applications, it has emerged that Trinity College Dublin is to reserve a percentage of places on its courses for students from Britain and the North, write Seán Flynn and John Downes
The move has been described as "discriminatory" by a careers expert who says Leaving Cert students will now have to "fight it out for the remaining places".
Mr Brian Mooney, president of the Institute of Guidance Counsellors, said the CAO process should be a level playing field. But the Trinity decision gave a clear advantage to one group, he said.
In correspondence with schools in Britain and Northern Ireland, the college's senior lecturer, Prof John Murray, tells A-level applicants that "they will be competing in a closed system and will have a significant chance of securing a place on a high demand course in 2005/2006".
But Trinity has strongly rejected any claim of discrimination against Leaving Certificate students, saying the new rules could actually make it fairer for such students to gain admission to courses like law, medicine and English.
This is in part because in popular subjects such as law, up to 50 per cent of students can come from an A-level background. TCD now estimates the figure for law could be reduced to around 25 per cent.
But education sources have expressed disquiet that a State-funded university can reserve places in this way.
Last year, Trinity moved to make things easier for Leaving Cert students by reducing the number of CAO points given for a top A-level from 190 to 150 CAO points. This came after research showed that the Leaving Cert exam compared more favourably to A-levels than had been realised.
The decision to award less points for A-levels provoked protests from colleges in the North with strong traditional links to Trinity. In response, Trinity recently agreed to reserve a percentage of places for A- level applicants to undergraduate courses.
The number of places to be reserved will be determined by the proportion of eligible applications to a particular course that TCD receives from A-level students.
But Mr Mooney believes the TCD decision means that all applicants to the college are not being treated equally. "Trinity has chosen to reserve places for A-level students. Unfortunately no such guarantee is available to Irish Leaving Certificate students who must fight it out for the remaining places," he said.