The light has changed. It’s the angle of the sun, the atmosphere, the first hints of home fires burning, the sudden increase in morning traffic. Autumn is here. Almost two hundred thousand students are about to begin or return to full or part-time higher education courses. Many more have already done so back in the supply line at second level.

The numbers are impressive. At a conference in UCD last year, Minister Ruairi Quinn said that up to 70% of those who have just completed their Leaving Certificate will enter higher education. Almost half (48%) of all 25-34 year olds in Ireland have a third level qualification, placing the country significantly above OECD and EU averages and fourth in the overall rankings. In a report from EU finance ministers in November 2009 Ireland was ranked first in Europe in terms of graduates per 1,000 habitants.
But, while we’re far ahead of the targets set by the EU for 2020, a word of caution is necessary. By comparison with northern EU States, Ireland has a very small and generally underappreciated vocational education sector. The emphasis in all public discourse is on successful participation in school followed by higher education. Other options are usually spoken of like a consolation prize for those who haven’t made the premier league.
When you consider that the most successful European economies are also the most successful societies, you might wonder whether our across-the-board emphasis on general education, and late vocational choice, is a good thing. But that’s how we do it and it seems to fit the prevailing demand. After all, in the same 2009 report from EU finance ministers, Ireland was ranked first in terms of how employers rank our graduates…
It’s interesting that the debate on youth unemployment in Ireland differs from other European countries. We emphasise unemployed (or under-employed) graduates. In other countries the preoccupation is with young people from disadvantaged communities, individuals who would usually participate in vocational training programmes. A country where two out of three people leaving upper secondary school attend higher education is always going to have more graduates among its unemployed than one with a robust vocational training system.
Such high numbers can’t be sustained without commitment from both the State, the individual and families. The State pays out over €8bn a year on education. That’s a lot of money, representing a seventh (that’s over 14%) of all expenditure. As for individuals, figures from StudentFinance.ie indicate an annual cost of €7,500 for attending college. Living at home halves the cost but how many can do that? And is it a good thing anyway?
And what price could you put on the time and dedication expended on learning?
It’s a huge undertaking. Which begs a question: why, individually and collectively, do we do it?
For politicians and officials, first and foremost it’s about building and maintaining a high skills base for our economy. The colleges acknowledge that, but also talk of learning, scholarship, college life. It can sound utopian. Who wouldn’t want it?
But economists frequently argue that people commit to study, and families support them, because they weigh the advantages accruing from higher education – a person with a degree earns more than a person without – and choose them: the so-called rational choice model. .
That may be true. But graduate pay scales very greatly. Social work, for example, is poorly paid compared with many technological degrees. So the earning dividend is limited. 
Maybe it’s as much to do with getting a qualification and a set of skills that make you marketable in the labour market? That seems significant in the light of the ebb and flow of CAO points, the choices that have been made over the years and how they have changed with the economic cycles.
For example, In some colleges you now can’t give away places on construction and property related courses. Equally, since the recession began, colleges have seen an increase in applications from people seeking to return to education…
Or maybe it’s about being with your own, a kind of giant dating and networking machine that’s a key engine of social reproduction. The Higher Education Authority published the National Plan for Equity of Access to Higher Education 2008-2013: disturbingly, the number of young people from semi and unskilled families going on to college has fallen from 10.8% (3,730) to 8% (3,212) since 2004.
If one wonders why so many go to college, shouldn’t one also ponder why so many don’t? Is it that they can’t afford to? Or is it that what’s on offer doesn’t suit? Or even, that what young people from unskilled or semi-skilled backgrounds encounter in college is an unwelcoming academic ethos and a deeply embedded class system, an environment where social caché is as important as learning ability? If your face or accent or don’t fit, you’re out.
Ireland is a socially reproductive society and it reproduces itself through the education system. The points system has degenerated into a competition and competitions have winners and losers. Some people know how to win and they’re in.
But surely there should be more to it than personal competitive advantage?
Well, there is. Going to college is a key chapter in an Irish person’s growth and development. There’s the elation of new experience and fulfilment, there’s new friendships, shared experiences, new horizons and personal change. Shedding the skin of adolescence, you grow. The strictures of school are unbound. It isn’t the real world – no college campus can be – but it’s your world!
True, in most colleges the learning is organised in steady bite-sized chunks. Students are kept busy. Nonetheless, college gives you the freedom to think for yourself, to form and advance opinions, to participate in intellectual life, to discover something to say and how to say it.
This is the premise of President Higgins’ “Being Young and Irish” initiative and every student registering during these weeks should feel empowered to script a submission, brief or long via president.ie. It’s your duty to think!
But there’s also the community life of a college, the societies and sports clubs, the gigs and partie School is controlled and predictable. College is entirely different in structure and scale. For example, UCD has 38 schools and a population of over 24,000. That’s as big as a mid-size town – though, of course, a college has an entirely different age profile from a town. And that’s central to the buzz.
It’s fun, heady, exhilarating, liberating – all reasons to want to go to college. But it can also be fraught and frightening. Quite a few people lose themselves for a bit. Recent research by Headstrong (headstrong.ie) showed that a lot of students drink badly, that is, they really overdo it when they’re on the tear. It’s not a good idea at all and, like illegal drugs, can lead to all manner of messy outcomes in behaviours, relationships and sexual health.
That isn’t to say that students shouldn’t experiment. If you don’t do it now when are you going to? But don’t take silly risks.
Whether or not alcohol and drugs are involved, mental health is a key issue for students. One person amongst 24,000 can feel pretty small, especially if away from home. Loneliness, isolation and depression are common. Learning to handle these is a big part of the agenda.
 Also, it sometimes happens that conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder first manifest themselves in college. All colleges have supports in place but there are also excellent websites and associated networks like pleasetalk.ie/ and reachout.com/.
Still, being a student can be the time of your life. The Hog recently sat in a Dublin pub (Grogan’s) and overheard a retiring university lecturer describe an encounter with Luke Kelly and Liam O’Flaherty in the Bailey during his student days. They talked politics and poetry and drank pints of porter. Kelly sang, O’Flaherty declaimed. It started at lunchtime and lasted till the wee hours. 
Every student’s college career should include random, exhilarating experiences like this. And lots of them. If that’s what being in college yields, well who wouldn’t want it? Go forth and make it happen!!