Sir, – Ten years ago and more there was great concern among my colleagues in DIT that courses were being “dumbed down” – I think it is fair to say a very widely heard concern in higher education. A major cause of this concern is the political drive to have 50 per cent of school-leavers enter higher education, in itself laudable, but a policy which has not been thought through.
Statistics show 95 per cent of social classes A,B,C1 enter higher education and around five per cent of the rest. This means that the entire intelligence range is represented in colleges from the higher social groups and most importantly that a large number of highly able people never go on to college from the lower groups.
We need to ensure that we have a range of institutions ranging from elite universities to colleges focused on more vocational and skill-based courses and get away from the idea that only universities have any real value.
Education should be a “drawing out” of the abilities of each individual: as such we need a range of institutions with different ethos and purpose but each valued, as each student must be valued for the person they are and what they can be helped to be.
Our governments over the decades have failed the nation in the terrible loss of talent present in those areas of our society which have never been helped to find their way through school education into higher education in one of its forms.
Dr PATRICK DAVEY,
Dublin Road,
Shankill, Dublin 18.