DIT received more first preference applications than any other college in the State this year. However, for those thinking of attending, a confidential internal report on its examination statistics seen by Campus Times makes for very interesting reading.

According to the report, overall pass rates for the past academic year are in the very respectable 85 to 90 per cent region, but the figure for those in the faculty of engineering is below 70 per cent. Only 68 per cent of full-time engineers passed their year; this figure includes supplemental exams. In part-time engineering, the figure was even lower, with only 34 per cent seeming to pass their year. Figures for part-timers in other faculties were still up in the 80 to 90 per cent area.

Second-year students on the diploma in fine art had an overall pass rate of only 50 per cent, as did those taking a course in retail supermarketing. Of those on their second year doing a diploma in languages and business French, only 37 per cent passed. First-years on the certificate in food quality assurance faced equally frightening odds, as only 50 per cent of them passed the year. Of the students in second year of the leisure management degree who began September 1999 with fire in their hearts, only 54 per cent went on to learn more about - as Spud in Trainspotting memorably said - taking their "pleasure in other people's leisure".

A spokeswoman for DIT stressed that the report was confidential and should really be considered a work in progress. She pointed to one course as an example: the report shows the overall pass rate for the full-time degree in film and broadcasting as 16 per cent. Upon investigation, the college said the actual figure was 100 per cent.

There were too many courses for the college to comment on each individually, but the part-time course structure within DIT was said to be the reason for the apparently very low figures for part-time engineering. In the case of the supermarket course, four of the 18 registered students didn't sit the exams; of the seven who failed, four did not resit and the three that did passed.

Tom Duff, DIT's registrar, said he believed DIT's figures were "not drastically different from those of other colleges". There were reasonable explanations for each of the cases mentioned above, he said. "The regulations are student friendly," he said, explaining that courses are modular and that part-time students take two or even three years to cover a year's worth of full-time work. DIT's rules also permit the students to carry over the exams they have successfully sat. However, this system means that, statistically, a low number "pass" a given year.

He also said that in some subjects the college had discovered that students were "working part-time and doing full-time courses on a part-time basis". This means, for example that the students deliberately focus on half the modules in a course for summer exams and on the other half for the resits in the autumn.

A fuller analysis of the figures appears in tomorrow's DIT Independent.