Patrick Lavelle | College Affairs Editor
Trinity College Dublin is under increasing pressure from the Irish Universities Association (IUA) to reduce its number of course codes, documents from a meeting of Trinity’s University Council indicate.
The IUA Council has agreed a number of measures aimed at reducing course application codes “to the minimum number necessary for efficient and academically appropriate allocation of places to applicants”. The College has accordingly undertaken to examine the reform of its existing admissions routes, including that of the two-subject moderatorship (TSM) programme, which is technically classified as a course in its own right but involves a variety of subject combinations, each of which has its own identifying course code.
The IUA, a quasi-confederate private enterprise to which the seven Irish universities are represented by their presidents, has long since held that Trinity gains an advantage among CAO applicants by offering a separate course code for each of its TSM combinations. Alternatively, many other colleges offer a generic entry route to programmes in arts and humanities, which involves one single course code.
Universities are to participate in a “collaborative and transparent process [to] revise their portfolio of entry routes”, guided by the agreed principles. They shall be expected to achieve the transition to a general entry approach “at the earliest opportunity, consistent with the need to ensure effective delivery of their portfolio of programmes”. A deadline of February was imposed.
A College spokesperson, Caoimhe Ní Lochlainn, told The University Times that the College is “about to embark on a very far-reaching review of its undergraduate curricula and structures which will include, but not be restricted to TSM”. When asked whether or not her response meant that College did not complete the requested work before the February deadline, Ms Ní Lochlainn did not respond.
The University Council has considered the reduction of course codes on a number of occasions. On one such occasion, in early 2014, the then Senior Lecturer led an informal discussion into a number of possible reforms, one of which was the generic entry option. However, it was not favoured.
