Michael Bastedo speaks about Ireland's college admissions system to the Irish Times 

Education professor Michael Bastedo has studied college admissions systems around the world, including that in Ireland, which relies heavily on the CAO points system. The country's class of 2021 received the highest grades in Leaving Cert history, yet due to the system's narrow scope of review (which primarily focuses on academics) many students missed out on their first choice course of study. 

“Ireland has one of the most structured college admissions systems, with few alternatives to the CAO,” Bastedo told the Irish Times. 

“It is high on transparency, relatively low on political corruption and very low in nepotism. There’s a deep concern to ensure that nobody running the system could know an applicant. On the other hand, outside the Leaving Cert, there’s not a lot of ways to demonstrate your capacity to do well.”

Now Simon Harris, Ireland's Minister for Further and Higher Education, questions if the points system is the right way to go, stating that it is “not the international norm”. If the admissions process were to be reformed, however, Bastedo says it would require a hefty investment. 

“The Irish system is cheap to administer, but to get holistic admissions right is expensive – we know this from how much South Korea had to invest in it.”