REAL reason students are dropping out of college

figures into college dropout rates show that more than 6,000 students – one in six – drop out during their first year.

The Higher Education Authority study also shows that the dropout rate among students with lower points is more than double that of the winners of the intensely competitive points race.

The blame for high dropout rates is usually placed on the system for funnelling students into university who are more suited to learning a trade or mastering a craft.

The story goes that if it wasn’t for our snobbery about carpentry and plumbing, our young people would be happily thriving on building sites or in workshops rather than bashing their heads against the proverbial brick wall of academe.

But where’s the evidence that students who just scrape into college drop out because the work is too much for them? It’s just as likely that the courses they are left with, which are the least popular, are not inspiring, educational or worth the paper they are written on. Institutes of technology and universities need to maximise their numbers, so there is a dizzying range of courses available and all sorts of subject combinations.

Students are told that everyone should aspire to a college education and they assume that a course in printing from their local IT will be as marketable as a maths degree from DCU.

Perhaps during college they wake up to the raw reality of the jobs market and the education system and realise they are wasting their time. High dropout rates may be more a reflection of poor quality in third-level education, than of society looking down on plumbers.