The president of Dublin City University has called for the abolition of the CAO points system.
Dr Ferdinand von Prondzynski said the system is discouraging students from careers in science, technology and other key areas.
"What is happening is that students with high points are being advised by parents, teachers and guidance counsellors to opt for high-points courses, when their aptitude and areas of interest often lie elsewhere. They are being told not to 'waste' any CAO points, but the consequences for the national economy are very serious."
The Republic, he said, has a huge surfeit of lawyers and other professionals, when graduates in science and technology were desperately needed by industry. We must, he said, examine this "mismatch" between student choice and our economic and social needs as a society.
The CAO points system, which dates back more than two decades, was, he said, developed "for another time" and must be abolished.
Dr von Prondzynski plans to raise the issue at the forthcoming meeting of the seven university heads. His comments reflect a widespread dissatisfaction among third-level presidents about the current system. Although the CAO system is admired for its transparency and fairness, many senior educationalists favour a radical overhaul.
The last review of the points system, the 1999 Points Commission, recommended no major change in the system.
Since then, the educational landscape has changed dramatically. With the explosion in courses and colleges, fewer students are chasing more places at third level.
As a result, the traditional "points race" has ended, except for the so-called "blue-chip" courses in medicine and other professions.
The Minister for Education, Mary Hanafin, is known to oppose any review of the CAO system, although she favours some reform of the points system.
This year, Ms Hanafin pushed through new postgraduate courses in medicine. She is known to favour a similar approach for dentistry and other high-points courses.
In recent years, all of the third-level colleges have struggled to fill places in areas such as computing, engineering and science. Points for many science-related courses have fallen dramatically.
The DCU president said a lottery system for each course - which all students could enter once they met a certain standard - would be preferable to the current CAO system.
