As incoming stage 1 undergraduates will be well aware, the Leaving Certificate is brutal. It is an archaic system that pits students head to head so that they can fight for every last point while the rest of the country simply looks on. This barbaric Irish ritual has to change, or at least that is the opinion of UCD president Orla Feely.
UCD wants to ensure that the process of entering college is as painless and fair as possible. To do this, it has looked to the past and found an extremely efficient and unproblematic system for matching students to their college courses.
To replace the CAO, UCD proposes a national lottery system where students, depending on their date of birth, will be randomly assigned a college course. Rather than having students spend a summer worrying if they got enough points for their first choice, the new system will allow them to spend six years fearing they will get shipped off to ATU Letterkenny to study ‘Fire Safety Engineering.’ This will ensure that all students who arrive at UCD are grateful to be here (even if they did really want to go to Trinity).
Experts welcome these calls as the drafting of medicine students may help solve the health crisis. With more students choosing not to go to college, the draft system will ensure we keep a steady supply of future doctors and nurses. The proposals include plans to station Gardaí in the airports to prevent desertion to Australia.
Critics claim this system will even the playing field and remove the advantages that grind school students get today. When questioned, UCD denied this, stating that students from Dublin whose postcodes begin with an even number will have the option to pay for an increased number of ballots.
Mothers around the country fear the effect this will have on their ability to live vicariously through their children’s lives and brag about their CAO points. Moira from Donnybrook stated that this proposed system would ‘put the last 17 years of her life to waste.’
Yash Murph – Fire Safety Expert
