Quo Vadis Opinions

College fees to return?
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Taster of college life
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More adults looking to return to education
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A good free quiz to test your motivation to get work done
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What graduates do next, once they leave college?
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How to sort out long winded meetings
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Students can apply for grants earlier this year
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Some students still waiting on this year’s grants!
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Low cost seminars on redundancy and your rights
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Lots of publicity around Minister Mary Coughlan’s request  to colleges to consider accepting an “E” grade on honours maths for college admission. On the surface this looks good as surely an “E” in honours maths is better than a “D” in pass maths.
However really this request as with so much of government  action  is addressing a symptom rather than the real issue which has been around a long ,long time.

The real issue is Irish students are not scoring high enough in maths compared to other countries. This is a problem because due to our high costs we need to attract high paying jobs many of which require good skills in maths and science.
Not enough students take honours maths, because it is a difficult course which requires substantial extra time compared to other subjects, plus failure in maths can prevent students from entering many college courses.

Maths Teachers  not fully qualified
Coupled with research which shows that nearly half  of secondary  maths teachers are not fully qualified to teach maths, you begin to see why students stay away from honours maths.

In fairness the Department has started to address this with the new project mathscurriculum, but many teachers seem to be very unhappy with this course, which aims to be much more practical ,realistic and actually develop thinking skills.  Not sure why this is so. The national roll out will see the first of the five  new strands  changing the exam in 2011 with full implementation in 2014. The target is to nearly double the percentage  of leaving certificate students sitting honours maths to 30%.

DCU has already taken the initiative and dropped the honours maths requirement for their manufacturing engineering with business studies (dc196)course . The curriculum has been revised to teach additional maths in the course.
So this could be a good option for people with an engineering interest, but do be aware that this route means you may not be able to transfer directly to one of the Engineers Ireland accredited B.eng programmes. (The DC196 course is not accredited). It’s still worth looking at for those with an interest in engineering but without honours maths.

PS
If you are considering leaving certificate  subject choices in general, remember taking one additional language, e.g. French, Spanish etc and one science subject is the best way to keep as many college options  open as possible.

Students who are just finishing 5th year (year 12 A-Level), and want to find out more about what discipline they want to pursue at university, may  find the UCD Summer School very useful in confirming their third-level study decisions. 

The following programme areas/subjects are participating:

Architecture,

Agricultural Science,

Food Science and Nutrition,

Business,

Computer Science,

Engineering,

History,

Law and Science.

Cost is reasonable too at €25 per day.

Further details here

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I’m getting an increasing number of clients considering a degree, so today’s post is about the general routes into college for people 23 years old on or before 1st January 2010. (such applicants are known as  mature student)

There are a number of routes into 3rd level colleges to complete a degree as follows

1. Direct entry to a 3rd level college.
If you are likely to have the leaving certificate points for a particular course which does not have restricted access (e.g. a portfolio or interview application process), you still have up to the 1st May to apply for a course starting this September. So in this case normal CAO timetable dates apply as you are not applying as mature student.

There is no standard CAO timetable for mature students. Confusingly each college has it’s own timetable and even within a college different deadlines apply for different courses.
The deadline for applying for entry in September 2010 as a mature student has passed for most 3rd level colleges in the greater Dublin area. Only Maynooth is still accepting applications for some 3rd level courses for September 2010 from mature students.

2. A Post Leaving Certificate  course (PLC)
These are generally of one year’s duration, though some are two years, usually they have a FETAC certificate and are available in a wide range of areas and colleges, including FAS. A FETAC certificate with a distinction can often be used to gain entry to a 3rd level college. Some of these courses are excellent; others have very little substance so do your research and make sure to talk to past students of your specific course. Many of these courses are currently processing applications now.

3. Pre University Access courses
Generally these courses are run by the 3rd level college or in partnership with a PLC college. Their specific aim is to prepare mature students for progression to a degree. Sometimes satisfactory course completion leads to automatic entry into a 3rd level course. This can be an excellent option as it means you can obtain a taste of college life in a course with other mature students. As these courses can often be very broad, it means you can also defer a decision on which specific course you select, when you have more information to make a more informed decision.
The deadline for application to Trinity’s access course  for september 2010 has now passed, but other colleges are still accepting applications e.g. DIT

Sometimes these courses, give access to full time degrees  but sometimes the degree option available is only part time, which means fees will be payable. So you need to know exactly what options are available at the end of your access course.

There are many more issues to consider when considering a return to education, so you will need to do your research to find out what’s right for you.

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Starting off in the  post room
A great story on advancing your career in publishing by starting at the lowest level. But the tips apply everywhere. Caroline also had a hearing difficulty, but she did not let this stop her.
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A free personality test for people interested in working in the software games sector
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A good article on working independently of your physical location.
Before you feel forced to emigrate read this.
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CAO
CAO points set to increase for popular third-level courses
Economic downturn has led to something of a boom in the demand for third-level places.
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Poor career guidance affecting school leavers
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Sign up to support a petition for increased investment in education
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Participate in research on on what it’s like to be unemployed.
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Only about 33% of employees say they trust their senior managers.
I’m not surprised at this given some of the stories, I’ve  heard from clients on how they’ve been treated. Many employers are using the recession as an excuse to bully employees.
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A good article on getting your employer to fund your course
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HPAT
Students can now appeal the HPAT test, which is essential for entry into medicine. Heard of students with excellent leaving points but not so good HPAT results are repeating the HPAT this year so this is good news. Maybe they do listen to us bloggers!
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Education
US firm calls for overhaul of Education. This is interesting and reflects what many educationalists feel. Will anything change though?
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Also good on the education front was that RTE series on St Peter’s school Dunboyne. very inspiring. The students were great. Of course they only showed the good teachers and not the minority of poor teachers in every school who drag the staff room and students down.
They were very strict on the school uniform, thought school staff redoing pupil ties had gone out with the ark. Interestingly none of the girls wore trousers, just that icky green & white kilt. Many schools now allow female students to wear trousers, if the school is mixed as one of the Irish equality opportunity bodies found against Bewleys cafe when they made female staff wear that appalling pinafore & hat whilst the lads could wear trousers.
If you missed the show you can also catch it on the RTE website.

College applications
College applications up by 10% with 3 weeks to go
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Also be aware of two new pathways to help school leavers with a  disadvantage or a disability to get to college. This is real progress and it is good to see very transparent requirements being put in place.

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A welcome development is the extension of the HEAR (Higher education access route) access route to 3rd level, to all 730 secondary schools in Ireland. This scheme is primarily aimed at young rather than mature students.
Students who qualify can access college courses on a reduced points basis as each college reserves a quota of college places for such students.

 For example, in Trinity a course that is 450 points through CAO may be offered to a HEAR student with 410 Leaving Certificate points.
HEAR students also get a wide range of academic and personal support while in college e.g. extra tuition and special grants.
So if your household income is in the following range

Number of dependants       Total Income
Less than 4                                 €51, 380
4 - 7                                          €56, 460
8 or more                                    €61, 295

Check out the new this website  as you may be eligible for this scheme if you also meet just two other criteria ranging from holding a medical card, or parent/guardian on social welfare , socio-economic group, secondary school in DEIS scheme, or living in a disadvantaged area.

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As regular readers will know I’m in favour of the new HPAT test  for entry to undergraduate medicine. When I wrote about the test last January, a few respondents disagreed and said it was simply to make sure less women got into medicine and that the quality of doctors would decrease. So given this lack of trust in the test it’s important HPAT runs smoothly and professionally.
However if I was assessing their performance to date, it would be a “could do better”.  Granted this is the first year of HPAT, but their procedures are causing significant irritation amongst students and are capable of undermining trust in this important psychometric test.

For a psychometric test to be worthwhile, two key criteria need to be measured.
Does the test actually consistently produce the same result for candidates of similar ability? (Known as reliability) For this reason all reputable tests always have strict conditions  to ensure all candidates sit the test in the similar conditions, the same instructions are always used, the room must be interruption free, time strictly allocated  etc,
In running the tests last February, quite a number of students experienced significant delays in sitting the test. For example in the rather cold RDS students had to hang around for an hour after registration before the test started.  Such students could argue they were put at a disadvantage to students who sat the test without delay and undermines the test reliability.  Now granted if you become stressed after waiting an hour, to the extent it worsens your performance, I’d query your ability to be a doctor, as you’ll experience a lot worse working for the HSE!
But the delay does provide ammunition for a legal challenge.

A second criteria is validity. Does the test actually measure what it supposed to measure? 
For example in 1949, the American army found  their psychometric test for selecting cooks actually measured reading ability rather than cooking ability. People who could cook well were not selected because they could not read the test questions. So the test was not valid.
The HPAT assesses three different types of ability.
   Logical reasoning and problem solving
   Non-verbal reasoning
   Interpersonal understanding
For the test to be valid, each of these abilities should be accurately measured.

It can be argued that the Leaving Certificate measures the first two abilities to a reasonable extent.
However the interpersonal understanding is most definitely not measured to any reliable extent in the Leaving cert and I believe this is where the HPAT adds real value to the selection process. After all interpersonal understanding from doctors is absolutely essential to good treatment. Doctors needs to understand what their patients are saying and the personal situations & lives  of their clients!
So a person considering a career as a doctor would find feedback on their interpersonal understanding very valuable as this indicates their suitability for the career.  But despite paying a fee of €95, candidates are not given this valuable information. This suggests HPAT do not have confidence in the individual test results.

However communications between the CAO & HPAT seems to be confused, so the students CAO record is able to hold the score of each individual result. So when the results were given to the CAO, they put up the individual test ability results. When the mistake was realised (Boards discussion board) it appears the individual scores were then replaced by the overall score.

Result: It appears some candidates got access to their scores, if they logged on to their CAO record quickly enough, others did not get access to their individual scores.
This is unfair.

I did take this up with the CAO, who said it was a matter for HPAT.
HPAT in fairness did reply promptly to my emails, but when I asked them to confirm no student had access to individual scores, there was a deafening silence.
Given there have been past legal challenges by disappointed would be medical students, HPAT needs to do better, because students are used to a more transparent system 
Also to acknowledge a personal interest. People like me who have invested considerable time and money in obtaining qualifications in psychometric testing to work with clients are frustrated that poor administration of this high profile test could damage the reputation of psychometric testing generally.

Update 28th August
The CAO application record now holds the individual test results.  Seems the HPAT people do listen to public comment!

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Disturbing figures on the dropout rates from science courses. These range from 39% in DCU to 29% in UCD according to the Irish Times.  Commentators are arguing this is because points for science are much lower than for other courses, so less able students are choosing these courses.

Government policy is to generate badly needed jobs in the science and technology area, so this is worrying.
I’ve written before  about high college dropout rates  and the lack of accountability.    In England they do an annual student feedback survey and publish course completion rates on this website. You can find out a wide range of information from what students thought of the lecturing support, to whether exam marking criteria was clearly published, to whether they got good feedback, to student employment rates.  It’s not perfect, but far  better than what we have here, which is a total lack of transparency and accountability.

I’m  DCU is so high, as they have a good support programme in place and the college president appears to show a lot of commitment to students on his blog. They were also very helpful to a client who did not achieve their expected leaving cert results last year.

If the Government are serious about changing the poor completion rates, then they need to look at the following areas:

 1. The honours maths course is very long and consumes more study time than many other subjects. The curriculum needs to be revised or else award bonus points for honours maths.  Initiatives like project maths which help to address the relevance issue should be rolled out quicker.

2. Teaching of science in primary and secondary schools needs increased sustained & consistent support.  The science curriculum rightly requires practical experiments. The stuff that students love doing & encourages interest in science. But science experiments require well equipped science labs and the Government have not recognised this.  For example after many years of lobbying, Our Lady’s school in Terenure finally got their go ahead for a new science lab (before the cutbacks) in June 2008. The existing classrooms were cleared out, the advance construction crew arrived then two days later they were told work was to stop, funding had been withdrawn. Yet money had already been spent getting ready for the new building! Yet more evidence of a slash and burn approach to cost cutting which is so demoralising for people working in the area.

3 The availability of good careers in science must be publicised more to students and their parents. Careers paths need to be clearer.

4. Many students struggle at 3rd level because studying for the Leaving requires  memorisation and rote learning with plenty of support for students.  Then they go to college which requires independent learning (i.e. you have to learn yourself) and less support from lecturers, whilst also coping with a totally new set of people, often without any friends.   3rd level colleges could do more to help students make the necessary changes in study approach. The Institutes of Technology are generally  better than the Universities in this regard. For example some of DIT’s business courses have special induction weeks at the end of which they make sure students know at least one other student.

Students themselves need to do more research into courses. I’m often surprised at the lack of research put in by clients on courses. You would not buy a car without doing the research and visiting a few garages but some students put more work into choosing a car then choosing a course which has life time implications.
I’ve even had one client(student)  who did not know the applied leaving cert course does not count for points for college applications!

So be prepared to spend time and energy researching colleges.
Don’t just go for a course on the basis of points. I’ve written on selecting a course several times. You can even look at boards.ie  here to as they have people commenting on courses.

So if you’re considering a science course, don’t be put off by the lower points required and  high dropout rates, do the research and decide  whether the course is right for you.

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