Dublin City University has denied charges of excluding students from a computer applications course.
The university said yesterday its decision to cut the number of places from 288 to 150 was not an attempt to exclude weaker students . "We have a responsibility to ensure that all the students we take in ultimately graduate in the course," a spokeswoman said.
This year the DCU course had appeared to buck the national trend which saw points tumbling for computer courses. In DIT, for example, points for its computer science course dropped by 100 points.
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One yesterday, the university's vice-president, Mr Albert Pratt, said if students with low points scores were admitted there would be "a significant probability of them failing" and the university would not be doing them any "favours" if they failed and dropped out of college.
On the same programme the Minister for Education, Mr Dempsey, said colleges were free to decide on their own admissions policy. He said he understood the worries about the high drop-out rate among students.
The drop-out rate is particularly high in computer courses. According to a HEA report last year, over 30 per cent of students dropped out of TCD's computer science course. The drop-out figures are even higher in the institutes of technology where the average non-completion rate is over 40 per cent.
A DCU spokeswoman said the decision to reduce places on the computer applications course was taken when fewer students opted for computer courses.
The president of the Institute of Guidance, Mr Brian Mooney, had accused DCU of "arrogance" by excluding students who would have ordinarily qualified for the course.
Meanwhile, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) yesterday pointed to a looming crisis for the information technology industry following the big drop in students opting for computer science and linked courses at university and it called for significant additional investment in education to head off major skills shortages.
Qualification requirements for high-tech studies have dropped this year as school-leavers shy away from the computer sector in favour of more traditional subjects due to a series of high-profile job losses in the last year, generated by a slowdown in the global economy.
A recent European Commission report predicted more than 1.7 million IT vacancies in Europe by next year. Almost 100,000 people work in the IT sector in Ireland.