Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 1 February 2022
584. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science the number of persons who did not complete year one and-or officially withdrew from their third level education course in 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and to date in 2022, by college and-or third level education provider in tabular form. [4793/22]
View answerThe data requested by the Deputy is not available.
The key source of statistics on students in higher education is the HEA's student records system (SRS) which records enrolments as at March of every academic year, giving a single point of reference. Therefore data is not available on a national level on students who leave their programme during the course of the academic year. However representatives from the sector have stated that there was no significant difference in the number of deferrals or withdrawals during the COVID-19 pandemic in comparison to previous years.
The HEA publishes reports on progression, which track the proportion of students registered in first year who progress to second year. The latest report, which tracks progression from the 2016/17 academic year to the 2017/18 academic year, reports an overall progression rate of 87%. Analysis of the data, including a breakdown by institution, can be found on the HEA's website at the following link: hea.ie/statistics/data-for-download-and-visualisations/progression-completion-data/progression1/ .
The HEA also publishes data on completion rates - i.e. the proportion of students who start a course in a given year and graduate within the institution they began in. The latest data published relates to students who entered higher education in 2010 and had graduated by the end of the 2017/18 academic year. A range of analyses, including analysis by institution, can be found on the HEA website:
hea.ie/statistics/data-for-download-and-visualisations/progression-completion-data/completion-analysis-200809-200910-201011-entrants/ .
