The Higher Education Authority has commissioned Professor Patrick Clancy to undertake national surveys of entrants to higher education. Surveys have been undertaken on the cohort entering full-time higher education in 1980, 1986, 1992 and 1998. The most recent report, entitled College Entry in Focus: A Fourth National Survey of Access to Higher Education, is based on a national survey of all first enrolments of undergraduates in their first year of study as full-time higher education students in 43 colleges in autumn 1998. The study is based primarily on an analysis of personal demographic and educational data, which were abstracted from individual student record forms. Being the fourth in a series of national surveys carried out at six-year intervals, this study facilitates an analysis of changes in the pattern of participation over a period of 18 years.
Following are two tables from the last Clancy report showing the estimated proportion of age cohort entering full-time higher education by fathers' socio-economic group and the rates of admission to higher education in Dublin by postal district. The third table sets out the number of pupils enrolled in post-primary schools in Dublin postal districts 1, 2, 7, 8 and 10 on the 30 September 1994, together with the percentage of those pupils who subsequently sat the junior certificate and leaving certificate examinations.