What do the following people have in common: Simon Harris, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Bill Gates?

Harris dropped out of his journalism degree course at the then Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT) to take up politics full time. Zuckerberg left Harvard without completing his studies to develop a little-known social media platform. Musk quit a PhD in physics at Stanford, believing that the internet was a more powerful forces for change. Gates abandoned his maths and computer science course to start a software company with his boyhood friend.

Most of us may not go on to become taoiseach, founders of the world’s biggest companies or, indeed, masters of the universe. The reality is some of the happiest, most curious and successful people take alternative routes to career success.

However, the conventional route to career achievement – the college degree – has never been more popular. Up to 70 per cent of school leavers in Ireland will begin their studies in higher education this month, one of the highest rates in the world. But about 15 per cent will fail to progress into the second year of the studies. Non-completion rates are as high as 50 per cent in some courses, especially those with low entry points and demanding course content.

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Among the factors behind rising dropout rates, according to university presidents, are students struggling or disengaging with their courses, as well as financial issues such as high rents, long commutes or too much time spent working part-time.

The trends are sparking a debate in higher education circles: are we sending too many young people to college who would flourish in more hands-on learning such as apprenticeships, traineeships or further education courses?

Ireland has one of the highest proportions of workers who are overqualified for their jobs. We also have one of lowest rates of school-leavers opting for more vocational routes such as apprenticeships. This is against a backdrop of urgent skills shortages in areas where more vocational routes provide skilled workers, such as construction, IT and healthcare.

Sinéad Brady, a careers psychologist who works with graduates and companies, says she comes across many employees who ended up in higher education due to social expectations rather than a genuine pursuit of knowledge. Many would have flourished with more hands-on learning, but felt shoehorned into taking a college degree.

“There’s a lot to be said for a degree, but not everyone should do it or needs to do it,” she says. “Your postcode shouldn’t determine what you do after school, but school league tables show areas where 100 per cent of students are going to higher education.”

Parents, she says, are hugely influential, as are classmates, schools and the media, with its focus on CAO and progression to higher education as the be-all and end-all. While dropping out of a college course can be seen as a failure, it can be liberating for those who flourish with more practical learning or get the chance to explore their real passion.

Lindsay Malone from Waterford knows all about the sense of shame that can come with dropping out of a college course.

She sat her Leaving Cert in 2004 and had just one choice on her CAO form: an arts degree at UCC.

“I was very clear – I just wanted to be secondary schoolteacher,” she says.

As the first person in the family to go to university, there was great pride at her achievement. Within a couple of weeks, however, her college plans were beginning to unravel.

“I knew very quickly that I wasn’t comfortable. I didn’t understand, really, what was happening around me and what I was supposed to be doing. I went from roughly 30 in my class at secondary school to over 200 in a lecture theatre, where the lecturer was reading out poems ... and I couldn’t translate what am I to do with this when I go home?” Malone recalls.

“I probably then started to feel like I didn’t belong. I had a lack of confidence, as well as the lack of having a family member that I could pick up the phone and ask, ‘What do I do?’”

After dropping out of the course, Malone felt like a failure.

“I just felt ashamed. I’d gone from being so clear on what I wanted to do, getting my opportunity to do it, and then coming back to these people who were really proud of watching me head off – to tell them I can’t do it,” she says.

Malone ended up getting a job in a call centre locally.

“That was a second load of shame – because that wasn’t the trajectory I was supposed to be on. It wasn’t the type of role I wanted to be in.”

Yet, looking back, it was where she began to rebuild her career dreams. She met “amazing people” who became her first mentors; she was promoted within six months; by the age of 19 she was managing others and became a team leader.

Her route back into education was a further education course in management, which was offered by her employer.

“I did that, nervously, thinking, ‘God, now and my employers will know that I’m not up to this’,” Malone recalls.

She ended up being chosen as one of three individuals with “great potential”, she says.

“It changed my thinking: it turned my shame into confidence.”

She ended up returning to college on a part-time basis and studied on a social care course, progressing to an honours degree and then a master’s in teaching and learning at higher education.

Today she has a PhD in social justice and education – and is director of further education and training at Waterford Wexford Education and Training Board, overseeing hundreds of education courses in the region.

“I had convinced myself that college was not for me, but I found a different way of doing it and a different approach,” she says. “I grew in confidence to the point where I thought, actually, I think I can go all the way.”

She found that she needed more direction, thrived in a smaller setting with like-minded learners. Part-time study also worked well by allowing her to immediately implement what she was learning into practice.

“I could go by night, learn new concepts and try them out the next day – rather than waiting four years until the end of a degree. That worked very well for me.”

As a mother of three, she feels there is still too much emphasis on points and the CAO for today’s school leavers, but it is changing.

“There are more conversations happening now around other options,” she says. “It’s getting better and, while there is still a way to go, there are so many ways to get to your end goal nowadays: PLC courses, tertiary programmes, apprenticeships. Whereas once there was one traditional route, now there might be five.”

Malone is also finally at peace with being a “college dropout”. She finds her story connects with others trying to rebuild their confidence to return to education or upskill.

“It was like a secret I held on to,” she says. “It’s only now that I’m a mother, and have a PhD and have moved into my current role that I feel like I’m owning my own story rather than running away from it. It’s taken 20 years to get to this point.”

For Brandon Hanley (24) from Limerick city, a career in making video games looked attractive on paper, so he started a four-year degree course in interactive digital media at what is now the Technological University of the Shannon.

The scale of what was involved – programming, web development, video module, back-end programming, server side scripting – soon began to dawn on him.

“It was definitely almost a culture shock, going in and seeing how many modules there were and how much goes into creating games,” he says.

Looking back, he says, he was more into art direction and design and wasn’t enjoying many of the other coding and development aspects. After two years, Covid hit and he made the decision to leave.

Initially, he says, he felt stressed and upset – now he feels very differently.

“It was absolutely best thing that could possibly have happened,” he says.

Hanley followed his creative passion and completed two photography courses at his local further education centre, run by Limerick and Clare Education and Training Board.

He flourished in smaller classes and thrived with one-on-one support. Recently, he held an exhibition in Limerick combining images and music; he is now forging a career involving creative photography and business-related work.

“So much has happened,” he says. “There’s been almost a butterfly effect. I’ve met so many people I talk to daily from that course. It’s definitely the best decision I could have made.”

Despite strong employment prospects and earnings potential, alternatives to the traditional college degree suffer from a status problem.

Taoiseach Simon Harris, formerly minister for further and higher education, has said a “snobbery” against further education leads too many families to discount it as an option “for other people”.

Tom Boland, former head of the Higher Education Authority, believes our obsession with higher education is a strength for Ireland on one level: career earnings and social outcomes are very positive.

But he says the status problem with alternatives to university means other career avenues are too easily discounted by families. Too often, less attention is given to the skills, competences and natural interests of the student and more to the status conferred by being a student in a university.

“The key thing is it doesn’t necessarily have to be a college degree; it can be a post second-level qualification,” says Boland, who is now an adviser and expert on education and research. “In that context, further education and training is important. The indications from the OECD and elsewhere are that the majority of future employment will rely heavily on high-level skills, whether acquired in higher education, further education or both.”

The challenge, he says is building an education system with seamless links between further and higher education, often referred to as tertiary education by policymakers

“If you have a joined-up tertiary education system, it means that if you start a course in a university – and you don’t like it – that there is a pathway back into an aspect of further education and training that is related ... It should take account of the learning and knowledge that you have achieved. A more joined-up system would provide those floors, so you don’t fall out of the system.”

Róisín O’Reilly from Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, lasted eight weeks in her degree course at what is now Technological University Dublin (formerly DIT).

She started out on a sports management and coaching course, but her heart was in hairdressing.

Most of her class were going to college and much of the focus at school, she says, was making sure you had the right subject selection to progress to third level.

When the opportunity of an apprenticeship with Toni & Guy in Dublin arose, she grabbed it with both hands.

“At college, there’s a lot of book work and science,” she says. “That’s not what hairdressing is about ... it’s about hands-on learning, one-to-one learning.

“You’re dealing with people the whole time. You’re put on the floor doing blow-dries in your first year and you have the pressure of dealing with clients and developing your communication skills ... you don’t get that in college.”

O’Reilly now runs a successful hair dressing salon in Ballyjamesduff – Venture Out – and is passing the secrets of the trade to one her own apprentices.

“Clients build up confidence in you by knowing you ... it starts the minute you bring them in the door and give them a high-quality service,” she says. “If you do a really good shampoo, they have confidence in you doing a blow-dry and then colouring their hair. They get to know you. It’s how I built up my own clientele ... you don’t really learn that in a classroom.”

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