IN JUST A few short weeks, thousands of young people will be heading back to school or going online to check out their muchanticipated Leaving Certificate results. Wednesday, August 18, is D Day, with the future hopes and plans of so many riding on getting the grades and points required for places at thirdlevel colleges.

However, getting a place at college isn't a simple matter of applying for your course through the CAO, getting the required points and accepting an offer of a place if you have made the grade.

Oh no, the reality is nothing so simple and straightforward.

The current system that we force our young people to engage with is ridiculous and needs a complete re-think.

Most courses have specific grade requirements which are not subject to change. For example, you might be asked to achieve a grade C1 in Higher Level English as a course prerequisite. This at least is a set target that students can aim for. However, the other requirement for course entry is the points system. Here, students are allocated points based on their actual results. As demand for courses fluctuates each year, most students use the statistics from previous years to set their targets for the number of points they will need for their preferred course. Good idea in theory, except the points requirement for courses changes with demand. In other words, after all your hard work and your delight at getting the grades you need and the points that used to be required for your first preference course, they go and move the goal posts by upping the points!

I suppose it must be said that points requirements for courses can also go down, giving others a chance for entry into courses for which there is less demand. Our flagging economic climate has impacted on course demand and last year saw a drop in points for construction related courses such as architecture and civil engineering. Good news if this was the area in which you were hoping to study. Bad news for graduates in this area with far fewer jobs available! In contrast, those who were planning a career in the science fields were very disappointed to discover a substantial increase in the points requirements for these courses.

According to the CAO Handbook, students shouldn't base their college course application on 'projected examination results or previous admission points'; rather their applications should be based on personal course preferences. The reality is that students must have some kind of gauge by which to set exam targets and regardless of this advice, students will look to the previous year's points in order to see if they have a realistic chance of being offered a place on the course they want. Once the results are in, a list of students for all courses is drawn up based on merit, with students being offered their highest preference course to which this rating system entitles them.

Young people have a strong sense of what is fair and most definitely what is unfair and a system where the requirements for courses constantly changes is surely an unfair one.

I don't claim to have all the answers, but surely the Department of Education and Science and all the highly paid education experts in the country can come up with a better solution to the allocation of HEI (Higher Education Institutes) course places.

We need to look to our neighbours across the pond and even further afield to our colleagues in the EU to come up with examples of other systems which may provide a fairer and more equitable method of allocating course places.

This year's first round offers are expected to be made in or around the 23rd August, with students having just 8 days (August 31 expected date) to make decisions that may effect them for the next three or four years of their lives.

Should they accept an alternative course, perhaps in the hope that the course they really want will be offered in the second-round offers (September 2 expected date)?

Or perhaps they should consider going back to school or even a private grinds school to re-sit the Leaving Certificate in the hopes of increasing their points for next year? In the first instance hopes of the career they wanted must be put on the back burner at least for the foreseeable future. In the second, students could find that after another year of hard work and study the 'points goal posts' have been moved again and they still can't access the course and career path of their dreams.

It just isn't fair.

- with DAVID TUCKER