I thank the committee for the opportunity to meet it to discuss this report which the HEA has published this year: Who Went to College in 2004? I will make a brief presentation and then take questions.
To give some background, the HEA views this as a very significant report. It surveys the entire cohort of students entering higher education in 2004. It provides very valuable data in the insight it provides on what is happening as regards the student cohort, particularly since higher education is seen as especially critical to national development. Higher education has always had a role in development of the individual and in enabling him or her to grow to full potential. That is increasingly important today as we look at issues of social equity and inclusion. We know from the data that those who have an opportunity to enter higher education tend to benefit significantly later in life. It is normally important as well in terms of the economic strategy or policy underpinning the country. The skills being acquired in higher education are becoming ever more critical for the needs of the economy. I will deal briefly with the background to the survey, say a few words on how we did it and give some headline findings in terms of what the report told us.
The HEA has being doing surveys such as this since 1980. We attempt to assess the characteristics of new entrants into higher education across a range of dimensions — age, gender, county of origin, level of financial aid support and social backgrounds from which the students come. The studies were initially carried out over a long period of time by Profession Pat Clancy of UCD. We owe a debt of gratitude to him for the work he has done in setting up the surveys. The reports have been particularly useful for policy formulation in recent years in setting out where we stand and, from that, having a basis on which to set targets. In particular, the McNamara report on equity of access to higher education in 2001 drew heavily on the 1998 HEA survey to set targets for improving social equity and equity of access.
In terms of the way we did the study, three main pieces of information were being sought. A survey was issued directly to all students entering college in 2004 which contained a range of questions primarily related to their social backgrounds. Further information was gathered from a census of all the higher level institutions. It was a matter of looking at their data banks and finding out where students came from, what they were studying and so on. We used other data sources to back up this material, primarily the national census of population and school-leaver surveys for additional information. The year 2004 was the first time Professor Clancy did not carry out the survey. It was done by the ESRI and Fitzpatrick Consultants for the HEA. However, it very much replicated the approach taken by Professor Clancy, particularly in its use of the CAO to access information on students.
In the headline findings gathered from the report, we see a clear sustained increase in participation in higher education at a rate that is not paralleled throughout many OECD countries. We have a good record for expanding the system and providing more opportunities for students. We see some narrowing of the gap between the manual and other social classes. The inequity between the classes has been a disappointing and long-standing feature of the system, but some narrowing has occurred, which is encouraging. However, some gaps still remain.
We see high rates of transfer from those who have completed the second level — leaving certificate — cycle into higher education. This is important information in terms of looking at leaving certificate completion rates and setting targets for the future. Specifically, we found that the last full survey in 1998 had moved from 44% to55%. That is quite strong growth and shows our system is expanding at a very healthy rate when measured against any OECD country. When broken down by county, all but four were above 50% in terms of admissions. There were some discrepancies in counties close to the Border. Building on past practice we have taken account of students entering Northern Ireland colleges. That increased the rate overall from 55% to 56% and had particular implications for counties such as Donegal and Monaghan, where much higher rates were discernible, when those admissions were taken into account.
We have also surveyed admissions on the basis of postal codes in the Dublin area. This is the only area in which we can use postal codes. That is informative in so far as postal codes provide some degree of proxy as regards issues of equality and equity. Some judgments may be made on what is happening as regards narrowing gaps. However, postal codes are always subject to considerable variation. Nonetheless, they showed considerable increases and as a result gaps were again seen to be narrowing. Clearly there are still enormous gaps — 11.7% versus 86.5% is significant. Again, looking back at 1998 we have seen that even those postal codes with very low rates of participation have shown considerable rates of increase, doubling in some cases. There are some grounds, therefore, for encouragement.
As regards socio-economic access, we have data showing the distribution of entrants between the various groups in percentage terms coming into higher education between 1998 and 2004. In general one sees a fairly strong pattern of continuity. The groups in 2004 maintained roughly the same weights as in 1998. The big exception was farmers, for which the rate had declined significantly, from 16% down to 12.7%. It is helpful to think of those numbers not just as percentages, but in terms of what they mean as regards the number of students coming in. Because the overall pool of applications is increasing in all areas, one again sees an increase in numbers, with the exception of farmers. There has been strong growth across all groups, even where the distributions are not changing significantly.
One of the key findings of the surveys over the 24 years we have been doing them has been a measurement of the participation rate by the different socio-economic groups coming into higher education. To try to measure participation rates we looked at the socio-economic classification of the entrants to higher education and measured the total number of a particular group in the population. We tried then to develop proportions to determine what percentage from a particular group would go on to higher education. This provided the ranges and shows the changes that occurred between 1998 and 2004. In most cases there was significant improvement. That was particularly encouraging as regards some of the manual groups, which have shown strong increases over a relatively short timeframe. In the case of skilled manual workers the movement was from 0.32% to between 0.5% and 0.6%. The reason we used ranges in 2004 was that the data were becoming increasingly difficult to manage. When we looked at the census data between 1998 and 2004, for example, we saw that Ireland had changed so much. There was an enormous increase in the number of people at work over a short period of time and great changes between social groups. There has also been an increase in the number of people not reporting themselves in the census in terms of a socio-economic group. This meant the "unknown" figure had gone from about 12% to 17%. That created some uncertainty since we could not be sure as to whether the "unknown" group fitted into a lower or an upper end profile or was equally distributed across the sector. In developing the ranges, therefore, we took a conservative approach and assumed the growth in the "unknowns" would, perhaps, be heavily weighted towards the lower groups and that is why the ranges were coming into play.
I want to mention the school-leaver survey as a separate source of data to help us understand whether the trends can be validated. This is a survey carried out by the ESRI for the Department of Education and Science, in which a small sample of students is looked at to see where they are going nine months or a year after they have left second level. This could include people who leave at the junior certificate or leaving certificate cycles. We took into account those who go into higher education, and also those who go into employment or other pursuits. Even though the numbers were different because the bases and the measurement methods were different, the trends were, nonetheless, very similar. That was quite encouraging for us in terms of having some degree of confidence in the findings. I do not want to go through the full survey, because as members will appreciate it is a very extensive report. However, there is a range of other areas on which we have extensive data as regards the type of colleges or institutions students go to, the fields of study and so on. If there are specific questions regarding those issues, we will be happy to answer them.
On the broad conclusions we might draw from the report, the distribution of new entrants seems to be relatively stable over time, but the overall pool is growing. We are still seeing certain groups maintain their traditional advantage which they have consistently enjoyed in gaining access to higher education, especially higher professional farmers who show very high rates of participation. We think their participation is maximised and it is hard to see them get any higher. There has been some significant improvement in the participation rates of the under-represented groups and with that, some narrowing of the groups that are coming through. However, we are very aware that the extent to which improvement in entry rates can be measured is itself a factor of completion at primary and second level. More than 70% of those who complete second level education and do their leaving certificate enter higher education. There has been increased participation by some of the manual groups and mature students. That is very helpful to the policy framework in which we are operating. In 2001, the McNamara report set us specific targets for mature students, disadvantaged students, disabled students and other groups. While this study did not measure disabled students, it appears on the basis of the numbers in the study that we have managed to exceed the McNamara targets two years ahead of schedule. This does not mean the job is done or we can relax because clearly there is still inequity in access to higher education and there are major issues about increasing the level of participation overall but it is encouraging to see that we are making significant progress, which gives us a good platform.