College reality shock: why thousands of Irish students drop out after first year

EASTER is early this year, after which, you could say, the academic year is more or less busted for another year. Third-level students will be on study leave getting ready for their exams, while leaving certificate students will be revising and, perhaps, getting themselves in a state of panic about all they still have to review before the exams kick off in the first week of June.

We all know the leaving certificate is a blunt tool used to determine where exactly students will spend the next few years of their lives or, God forbid, determine who will get to pursue what they really want to spend the rest of their lives doing.

It’s all about the points and, as we have seen, irrespective of the various alternative routes open to students nowadays, the first round offers from third-level colleges are all-important.

It doesn’t matter that the student may spend half-a-day travelling to and from such fine establishments or bankrupting themselves and their parents if they are lucky enough to find some place to live; it is all about getting to ‘enjoy the college experience’, if you are to listen to all the hype.

I’m not going to talk about the pluses or minuses associated with life on college campus: what I would really like to know is why, after all the studies and all the reports about getting students ready for life in the fast lane that is third-level education, are we constantly hearing horror stories about students suddenly finding themselves out of their depth, suffering from isolation, lacking in motivation – the list is endless.

Most young people, boy or girl, don’t want to admit this, but they hate change. They may say they are ready to move on after sitting their leaving certificate, but the facts show otherwise.

Approximately 15% of first-year students in Irish higher education fail to progress to the second year, with about 7,000 students dropping out in the 2021/22 academic year. This represented a significant rise from 12% recorded in the 2020/21 academic year. Before the pandemic, the non-progression rate was 12%, briefly dropping to a low of 9% during the 2019/20 academic year.

Non-progression rates vary by course, with rates higher in level 7 ordinary bachelor degrees (31%) and level 6 higher certificates (25%), compared to 14% for level 8 honours. Not surprisingly, girls are more likely to progress to second year across most sectors.

Such statistics should set off alarm bells all over the place. Here we have students putting their heart and soul into studying for the leaving certificate in order to gain a place on the course of their choice, only to discover that perhaps their expectations were not exactly met, they couldn’t keep pace with the course information or they simply hated the whole third-level experience and suffered from isolation, depression and so on.

But did they receive any warning this might happen or, more importantly, if they did, were they given any coping mechanisms or did they even know how to ask for help?

I read a court report recently where a young student was charged with allowing her bank account to be used to launder stolen money. It was accepted by everyone that this student had not gained financially, but over €12,000 had passed through the account before disappearing into a crypto-currency account on Binance, routed through Luxembourg.

As soon as gardaí arrested the student, she pleaded guilty and assisted in as much as she could – but it transpired that this was only a small cog in a huge wheel linked to a nationwide social welfare fraud scheme.

You may say this young person should have known better, but by and large young people are very trusting and don’t see the dangers in a lot of what they get up to. When it comes to money, most have been the recipients of the bank of Mam and Dad their entire lives; the nuances of how the banking system really works doesn’t interest them.

Perhaps that is the fault of parents, but it is also the fault of our education system. We are laser focused on our offspring getting the necessary points to get into the college of their choice, but miss some very important small stuff, such as an awareness of the pitfalls they face by giving personal information, for whatever reason, to new friends, how to make ‘real’ friends with others, the art of socialising, even how to do a bit of shopping without overloading on crap.

That said, I was heartened by a simple scene played out in the newly-located Mr Price store at Hanover last week. A woman approached the till and asked the assistant if he had a key to release one of the trolleys as she did not have any coins to do so.

The attendant explained that she could use a 20c coin if she didn’t have a euro, but the woman replied she only had cards, no coins. Up stepped a student, who quickly produced a coin to allow the woman to proceed with her shopping, leaving me thinking there is hope for us yet.