Engineering and business studies, two areas closely aligned to the economic recovery, were the big movers in this year's CAO offers. Points were also up in science and technology, with a few notable exceptions, while those for arts and humanities slipped a little.
There are several forces behind these trends: the rise of 1.6 per cent in the number of students taking the Leaving Cert this year, the extra 200 students earning 25 bonus points for getting a D or better in higher level maths, and the annual fluctuations in demand and supply.
Demand for courses linked to growth areas of the economy is clearly up: students are observing what’s happening in the jobs market and responding accordingly.
Figuring out the supply side of the equation has always been a little trickier. Higher education institutions can inflate the points for a particular course by offering only a small number of places.
Last year, Prof Philip Nolan, the president of Maynooth University, who chairs an advisory group on college entry, highlighted this fact, saying there were "too many courses with very small numbers that are there for historic reasons to do with ensuring that points are not seen to sink too low".
He told The Irish Times: "We need to get away from this sense that points are related to quality. Points are related to nothing but demand and supply, and it's a real shame if institutions, including my own, feel they should reduce the supply to make the points higher in order that it looks like the course is better; the course is no different."
Since his expert group reported, all institutions have agreed to reduce the number of course codes on the CAO. However, progress is patchy.
NUI Galway, for example, plans to reduce the number of CAO courses it offers from 57 to 47, but also seeks to achieve a 10 per cent rise in the number of courses requiring at least 400 points and a 20 per cent rise in the number of those requiring at least 450 points.
There are 925 level 8 courses on the CAO listings this year, down from 943 last year. The number of level 7/6 courses remains unchanged at 472.
The impact of supply on points can be seen in an area such as engineering: UCD’s general entry course (DN150, which took in 254 students last September) is up 15 points to 510, and NUIG’s general entry engineering (GY401, which took in 155 students last year) rose by 50 to 450.
Galway also offers a number of niche engineering courses, however, and these jumped significantly, with energy systems engineering (which had just six places in 2014) up 75 points to 505, and civil engineering (five places in 2014) up 35 to 450.
Similarly, at University of Limerick, civil engineering (five places in 2014) went up 25 points to 475, and mathematical sciences (eight places) went up 45 to 435.
Many of the big movers at TCD are also relatively small courses. Maths (33 places in 2014) went up 30 points to 570; engineering with management (25 places) went up 45 points to 505; law and French (16 places) went up 25 points to 585; and computer science and business (16 places) went up 35 points to 585.
UCD and Maynooth University have led the charge in introducing broader-entry courses, and they can take encouragement from the fact that the points for these are not falling. In fact, in many cases they’re going up, because students like the added flexibility they provide.
