The boom is back as students want to get down to business
B USINESS courses are back with a bang, as more students than ever see a career for themselves in the world of high finance. The record numbers applying for these programmes represent a vote of confidence in the future of Ireland in a post-Brexit world.
It is part of a steadily growing trend in recent years of looking to courses that will more likely lead to jobs in the private, rather than the public, sector.
Students are hoping their courses will prepare them for a rapidly changing world where they know that technological advances will kill off many existing jobs, but allow for the creation of new ones.
During the depths of the recession, the numbers listing honours degree courses in business or administration as their first preference were a little over 10,000. This year, they’re heading up towards 13,000 first preferences.
The increase cannot simply be explained by the overall rise in the numbers applying to the CAO over the past few years. As the numbers seeking to study business has risen, the applications for arts/social courses went down – from a high of 18,455 in 2010 to 16,562 this year.
Also down over the same period is demand for teaching as a career – from 5,548 first preferences to 4,951 this year.
It’s clear that as the recession ended and the upturn started, students began to look away from ‘safer’ careers such as teaching.
Honours degree courses in science and applied science are now nearly 2,000 up on the 7,566 first preferences in 2016.
Engineering and technology courses may have dipped a little from last year, but at 7,960 they are still comfortably ahead of the 6,143 first preferences in 2010.
Another straw in the wind this year is the rise in entry points for property economics in DIT, which is up from 320 in 2014 to 350 last year and 377 this year.
Auctioneering, valuation and estate agency in DIT is up from 220 in 2014 to 279 this year. Perceptions about future jobs are obviously influencing student choices.
Next month, something approaching 50,000 students will enter college.
The vast majority of them will be working in 40 years’ time. Indeed, many will still be working half a century from now, as life expectancy lengthens and pension age continues to rise.
They have no way of knowing what kind of jobs they will be doing a few decades from now. The only certainty is uncertainty, which is why they are putting more thought into their career paths than in the past. Some futurologists predict that robotics and artificial intelligence will destroy more jobs than they will create.
But Prof Jim Browne, who retires as president of NUI Galway shortly, does not have much time for such latter-day Cassandras, saying similar inaccurate predictions were made at times of great industrial revolutions in the past.
Nevertheless, the changing circumstances do put pressures on students to develop their skills in a range of areas, including what might be termed the soft skills of communication, team working, flexibility, problem solving, empathy and so on.
These can be acquired or absorbed in different courses and by involvement in college activities.
As Dr Browne puts it: “People have to take responsibility for their own future, even create their own future. Yes, many can get a good job in a multi-national, but that might not be there in 10 years’ time, so they are going to have to reinvent themselves and their careers.
“It’s important that at a formative stage of their lives, they begin to realise that there are no permanent, pensionable jobs in the private sector any more. “They have to be innovative, they have to be entrepreneurial, they have to learn to take responsibility, to learn from each other. They can’t just wait for society, or the Government or the banks, to supply the jobs for them.”
The evolving pattern of course choice reflects changing attitudes towards careers.
Up to now, higher demand in one area invariably led to higher points, but this is not a normal year, as a new grading and points system has been introduced this year.
As a result, for instance, many business courses, with the exceptions of Trinity and UCD, now have slightly lower entry points than last year, even though there are more applicants. Similarly, law – which has risen in the popularity stakes – did not seen any dramatic increase in points. Law this year had 2,658 first preferences for higher-level courses, compared with 2,301 seven years ago.
Law courses were down in UCC, NUI Galway and a few other places, but up slightly in Trinity, from 535 to 542, and Law and Society is up from 450 to 455. Law in our biggest higher education institution, UCD, is down from 525 to 522.
Overall, the architects of the new grading and points system must be reasonably pleased with the way things are working out so far. There has been little negative reaction to date, but today might tell a different story, as anomalies and unintended consequences surface.
And when students queue up to view their Leaving Certificate scripts at the end of next week, many may be unhappy with the way the new grading system has affected their chances of college entry.
In the past, most grades were separated by 5pc of the marks, now that has doubled to 10pc, and some may feel hard done. Students and their parents won’t be the only ones on tenterhooks today.
Students are hoping their courses will prepare them for a rapidly changing world, where they know technological advances will kill off many existing jobs