Random selection for college courses is ‘least worst’ system, says minister

By Cillian Sherlock, PA

The Higher Education Minister has said his “heart goes out” to students who missed out on third-level courses due to a lottery allocation system.

It came after the Central Applications Office (CAO) issued 86,098 round-one offers to 59,201 third-level applicants, following the Leaving Certificate.

These offers consist of 54,256 opportunities for Level 8 courses and 31,842 for Level 6/7.

Applicants are allocated positions in courses ranked in order of their performance in the Leaving Certificate.

However, if there are too many candidates with the same number of points competing for the last available seats on the course, students from that cohort are chosen at random.

It means an applicant may lose out on a seat at their preferred course to a different student who had an equal score in the Leaving Certificate.

This is a regular occurrence and 2025’s first-round offers showed that a lottery was used for more than 20 courses spanning a range of topics including pharmacy, dentistry, engineering, nursing, midwifery and education.

This also included two courses which required the maximum 625 points this year: management science and information systems studies as well as dental science – both at Trinity College Dublin.

On Wednesday, Higher Education Minister James Lawless defended the system as “the least worst way to do it at the moment”.

“Ultimately, the courses that may be decided (by) random selection are less than 2 per cent of the entire, course load across the spectrum.

“So, while my heart goes out to a student in that situation that might have worked so hard and ultimately have their choice is determined by random selection, it is a very small cohort.”

Asked if he believed the system was fair, Mr Lawless said: “Absolutely I think it is fair. It may not be desirable, it may not be what we would want to have but, in terms of fairness, it is arbitrary. It is mathematical.

“What would be unfair would be some kind of human intervention to nudge one student above another.”

Mr Lawless said some of the excluded students may find they have a different path into their desired course or career in the future.

Asked if there was any reform envisaged for the system, he said it was not a new problem and added: “The reason that the solution hasn’t provided itself before now is because the solution we have right now is the best currently available.”

He said there was a Programme for Government commitment to reform the CAO system to ensure that young people are best served by it.

Just over half of Level 8 offers are for the applicant’s first preference course, and 80 per cent are for one of a given candidate’s top three preferences.

90 per cent of Level 7/6 offers are for the applicant’s first preference course, with 99 per cent offered a course within their top tree.

Offers must be accepted by 3pm on Tuesday.

Second round offers will be available to view on the CAO website from 2pm on September 8th.