Minister for Education Batt O’Keefe is in the process of carrying out an investigation into the perceived ‘grade inflation’ that is occurring at Third Level Institutions.
The Minister is concerned after a report was published by three researchers from IT Tralee – Simon Quinn, Brendan Guilfoyle and Martin O’Grady highlighting the considerable increase in the number of third level students receiving first class honour degrees.
Research started in 2007 and took six months to collate, yet the three researchers claim that when they tried to gather further information they encountered significant opposition from higher level institutions. Dr Joseph Ryan, registrar of Athlone IT wrote: ‘I’m open to supporting a . . . study into the matter but would not wish to see a series of public pronouncements that can serve only to undermine confidence in a system of education that, whatever its faults, has served this country well.’
The minister’s concerns about the increased awarding of higher grades at the end of second and third level education are also raised in the context of the statements made by Dr Craig Barrett, the retired Chairman and CEO of Intel, which were critical of Ireland’s education system and our only average performance in international rankings of maths and sciences.
The percentage of university graduates getting first-class awards in honours degrees in Level 8 programmes has increased from 8.3 per cent in 1997 to 16.2 per cent in 2008.
The percentage of HETAC graduates getting first-class honours awards in Level 8 higher degrees increased from 11.2 per cent to 16.6 per cent between 1998 and 2008 in the institute of technology sector, excluding DIT.
The Minister said a number of influential voices in the employer community have voiced their concerns about graduate quality and it was important to listen to those concerns and be responsive to boardroom demands.
‘In other words, our approach to developing education policy must be strategic and more aligned with industry needs......the key to addressing possible grade inflation is through better internal quality assurance and external quality review,’ he said.
These tasks are being undertaken by colleges themselves and HETAC; the Further Education and Training Awards Council; the National Qualifications Authority of Ireland and the Irish Universities Quality Board. All these agencies have been subject to external review by international panels and have been adjudged to be performing these functions to relevant international standards.
Legislation is now being drafted to set up a new qualifications and quality assurance agency that will merge these bodies.
Speaking in the Dáil last week, Fine Gael education spokesman Brian Hayes described the findings as “very worrying”, saying they confirmed a trend that many in Irish education have suspected for some time.
He claimed the Minister and his department had been ‘in complete denial’ about the problem of grade inflation for several years, and had only recently taken action following conservations with multinationals.
O’Keeffe said similar problems relating to grade inflation had been experienced in other countries, such as the US and UK. ‘We must not underestimate or undermine the quality of the graduates that have gone through our system,’ he said.
