IN June last year a Higher Education Authority steering group, set up to look at the future of this educational sector, recommended that provision should be made to increase the existing 28,300 State aided third level entry places by providing between 3,000 and 4,400 additional places during the six years from 1994 to 2000. This increase was to be achieved "very much on a phased basis", starting with 500 extra places in 1995.
It has now emerged that, in fact, last summer no less than 3,750 additional places were provided in State aided higher education institutions - of which 1,000 (an increase of just under 7 per cent) were on courses leading to degrees, the remainder being on diploma or certificate courses. Thus, at the time when the HEA report was being published, the whole of the additional higher education capacity that Was being tentatively proposed for the next six years was in fact already about to be offered to our 1995 school leavers!
This raises several questions. First of all, how could the HEA have been so totally unaware of what was actually happening last year in the sector for which it is responsible? This development certainly raises a question about its liaison with the universities and colleges which actually provide the extra places.
One must also wonder just how our RTCs (which have been responsible for the great bulk of the 20 per cent overnight increase in the number of entrants to diploma and certificate courses) have managed to cope with this sudden huge increase in numbers.
These colleges have undoubtedly been helped in this by their favourable student/staff ratio (averaging 14 students per staff member as against a 22:1 ratio in the universities), and some of them may also have had spare accommodation, which the universities clearly lack. Nevertheless, a one fifth increase in entrants in a single year must have posed considerable problems for some of them.
This year's sharp increase in the number of entrants to higher education has raised the proportion of the school leaving age cohort going on to State aided third level courses to just over 50 per cent, and the proportion of Leaving Certificate students proceeding to higher education to 60 per cent.
MOREOVER, these figures significantly understate the total number of Irish students benefit from entering higher education because several thousand school leavers now enter courses in Northern Ireland and Britain each year, and clearly a high proportion of those taking courses in non aided institutions here (who already numbered 2,250 in 1993), were Irish students.
Taking these two factors into account, the overall third level entry ratio for Irish students must now be higher than 55 per cent.
It is of course the case that a number of higher education entrants - about 1,000, the HEA estimates - are not entering on the basis of Leaving Certificate performance but are mature students. But this factor is offset by the fact that at least as many school leavers go to non aided institutions - such as the Royal College of Surgeons, Mater Dei, the Milltown Institute or private colleges.
There are also other "late entrants" who are not going to higher education on the basis of a current year's Leaving Certificate - usually students who left school in an earlier year and who have deferred entry as they sought to improve upon their Leaving Cert results. However, as a broadly similar number of school leavers presumably do the same thing each year, this late entrant factor must tend to cancel itself out.
So, even leaving on one side the additional numbers going to Irish non aided institutions and to colleges or universities outside the State, the 1995 figure of 50 per cent for third level entrance seems to be a valid measure of the proportion of our school leavers now going on to higher education in State aided colleges and universities. This figure is certainly well above the average for the rest of the European Union - a level we had already almost reached in 1992, which is the last year for which comparative international data are available.
For Ireland to have moved ahead of the EU in his respect is a remarkable achievement in the light of the fact that the 1992 data show that our 18 year olds represent a 38 per cent bigger share of our population than was the case in the rest of the European Union.
Such a level of demand has posed a real problem for a country like Ireland whose per capita resources last year were still 17.5 per cent below the EU average. To have succeeded in providing such education for a higher proportion of a much larger school leaving age cohort than in the rest of the Union is by any standards an outstanding achievement.
ONE only has to look back to the late 1960s, immediately before free secondary schooling was introduced, to see how far we have come in this respect in less than 30 years. Despite the fact that today's school leaving age cohort is one quarter larger than 30 years ago, the proportion of this much larger young population going on to higher education in the State is now almost four times greater than the 13 per cent who were being catered for in 1967.
To what extent has this quantitative increase been accompanied by any dilution of the quality of our higher education - and how does this quality compare with that of higher education in other European countries today? By their nature neither of these questions is capable of a simple statistical answer. But there is a number of points that can be fairly made.
First of all, there has, of course, been a huge expansion of the previously small non university sector, within which a majority of the courses are shorter certificate or diploma courses - although a number of non university institutions offer degree courses also in 1993, 52 per cent of students started degree courses, but only 48 per cent went to universities.
However, this huge increase in recent decades in the number of entrants to diploma and certificate courses, mainly in non university institutions in no way represent any dilution of the quality of our higher education: it is rather a reflection of the changing pattern of demand for labour, with many employers requiring not merely a much higher proportion of graduate employment than in the past but also more specialised education and training of their non graduate entrants.
As for our degree courses, I think most people who took degrees in earlier decades and who are also familiar with the standard currently required would agree that degree standards have risen, not fallen. Despite the fact that university class sizes are much larger now than in earlier times, this has been more than offset by the extension, or in many cases fresh introduction, of tutorial teaching of students in small groups.
Although our universities have a significantly less favourable staff/student ratio than in Northern Ireland and Britain, our degree standards, monitored by the widespread use of examiners from these jurisdictions as well as from our own, are at least as high indeed I have the impression that high honours are more difficult to obtain here than in the UK.
As for the Continental countries, I believe that vis a vis the Latin countries, our higher staff/student ratio and better student contact provision give us an advantage - although some of these countries compensate, in part, for their deficiencies in these respects by having longer courses, involving four to six years undergraduate study.
Like Britain, we may, however, be at some disadvantage in relation to northern European countries which have good staff/student ratios and longer courses, as well as, in the case of Scandinavia, much later university entrance after a post secondary period in "gymnasia". Moreover, in many disciplines we are not equipped to provide adequate doctoral training here and we fail to offer any financial assistance to our postgraduate students who, as a result, have to go abroad for doctoral studies.
But overall, I do not believe we can be seriously faulted on the quality of our higher education, or that we have any reason to regret our application of a larger proportion (1.4 per cent in 1993) of our national output to State aided higher education than most other European countries.