If there is one lesson to be gleaned from the fact that over 90 per cent of Trinity Access Programme students remain in Trinity to complete degrees, it is that we must reconsider the blind faith we place in the Leaving Certificate and CAO.
Like many aging institutions, durability is often confused with infallibility. When Trinity – led by Prof Patrick Geoghegan – launched a feasibility study of an alternative admissions process, hackles went up. These students were “guinea pigs”, cried the doubters.
The success of TAP raises an obvious question: why isn’t the CAO – transparent, on the level – good enough to ensure diversity in our education system?
Provost Patrick Prendergast got it right when he told Alan Rusbridger, the Principal of Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford University, that “there were too many people who felt Trinity College Dublin was not for the likes of them”. For too many secondary school students, the combination of the Leaving Cert and CAO is a route too riddled with inequalities, leading to a system often seen as out of reach.
Too many third-level students, hot-housed for months through grinds and tutors, are precious about their Leaving Cert results, seeing them as mark of their intelligence and status. But these students need to reconsider too. TAP proves that an individual’s points or background become largely meaningless when it comes to doing well at university.
Today, nearly 20 years after TAP launched, it’s hard to doubt its success in finding talented, intelligent students whose ability might have been left undiscovered by the CAO process. This isn’t because the current system is useless, or even a bad one. Instead, it’s because there is a sort of national complacency, one in which everyone believes that the system, in itself, is enough to achieve parity of opportunity.
Trinity was forward-thinking enough to champion access in a serious way and today the College is reaping the benefits. And if TAP has been successful, there is a consensus that more needs to be done. If Oxford University is emulating Trinity’s access programme, then why can’t Irish universities or the CAO itself consider new reforms? It might be high time to consider how far TAP goes and how much work there still is to do.
