Last week saw the decisive stage in the great annual points ritual, as students around the country discovered whether they had secured entry to their favoured third-level courses. The Higher Education Authority also released data on full-time participation in third-level, with wide variations across socio-economic groups and geographical areas.

Some of these variations are easy to understand. The leafy southern suburbs of Dublin have over 90% of school-leavers heading to college, while in some working-class districts the figure is one fifth of that. Laois and Wexford figure low on the league table, while some less prosperous counties in the west and northwest send a greater proportion to college.

In terms of points thresholds, the courses with the highest entry requirements are those hardy perennials: medicine, veterinary and law. It takes 580 points (out of a possible 625 including bonus points) to study some courses in these subjects. Albert Einstein, on an off day, would struggle to get 580 points in the Leaving Cert. Some of the news coverage each year attributes these high points requirements to the popularity of these courses, which is a bit of a misunderstanding.

In the Irish system, supply and demand are balanced by the points requirement. If implausibly high points are required, this means that somebody, somewhere, has managed to keep the supply of places well below demand. The result is that students who get very respectable points, say 500 or more (which puts you in the top 10% of students nationwide), cannot study these subjects in Ireland, but must head off to some other EU country at substantial extra expense.

Irish students who came in the top 10% could be studying veterinary medicine next year elsewhere. But it is perhaps comforting to know that the next generation of vets, solicitors and GPs will be up there with Albert Einstein.

Who could possibly be restricting the supply of places? Nobody suggests that these astronomic points requirements are a reflection of the academic difficulty of the subjects concerned, which are not, strictly speaking, academic disciplines at all. These courses deliver professional qualifications. Since the courses with the most outlandish points requirements are almost all in professional subjects, the finger must point at these august professions, which are somehow managing to restrict entry.

There is only one reason to restrict entry and that is to sustain current levels of professional earnings. This is an injustice to the general public, who must pick up the tab, as well as to would-be students unable to gain entry but well able to handle the courses concerned.

The percentage of Irish school-leavers going on to full-time third-level education is now very high by international standards. The desirability of sending an ever-rising portion of school-leavers to college is rarely questioned in Ireland, nor is the contribution to their subsequent employability of the qualifications for which they study.

A new book published by Oak Tree Press for the German-Irish Chamber of Industry and Commerce contains an interesting chapter from Christoph Mueller, the Aer Lingus chief executive, who also chairs the board at An Post. Mueller thinks that Ireland should get over its apparent obsession with producing unlimited numbers of graduates and should worry more about what they study. He notes the dearth of apprenticeship training in the crafts, the limited provision of technician courses and the continuing failure to get to grips with language teaching. On the latter, he cites the amazing example of a call centre in Dublin employing 1,000 people, of whom only 10 have Irish passports.

The current boomlet in the Dublin area includes expanding companies operating pan-European customer support centres, which means plenty of jobs for people who speak Spanish, German, French or Italian. Most of these jobs are being filled by well-qualified immigrants. It has long been the principal plank of Irish policy to invite in foreign capital to provide jobs for Irish labour. The absence of language skills means that the policy is now reduced to providing an offshore production platform for other countries’ capital, but also for other countries’ labour. Some of these enterprises, employing very little Irish labour, are enjoying generous tax breaks and generous capital grants from State agencies. It is time to ask what precisely is being achieved by this accidental industrial policy.

It is impossible to recruit a German-speaking Irish person with computer skills. The Irish education system simply does not produce people who match this description. A higher education system should not be judged only by the numbers of graduates produced, but also by the value of what they study. And it is time to ask whether the third-level sector in Ireland has outgrown the Irish economy.