Tapu Misa: Full marks to preference for minorities

My daughter went to her first truly flash dinner last year. It was a prestigious event to honour outstanding New Zealanders, and her low-decile high school had been offered a couple of tickets by a supportive local business. She and a classmate were chosen to represent their school.

It was an inspiring evening. There she was revelling in the company of so many accomplished, high-noting New Zealanders when she realised that she was getting some odd looks. She asked her classmate if there was anything wrong, if maybe she had something on her face.

"Well," said her friend drily, as if nothing could be more obvious, "you are the only brown person in the room". Funnily enough, my daughter hadn't noticed till then.

Remember this is Auckland, the biggest Polynesian city in the world. An Auckland supposedly mature enough not to need dedicated Maori seats in its new Super City. An Auckland where everyone has equal opportunity, if only they'd work hard enough.

At the University of Auckland, they know the problem is more complex. Back in 2003 at the Knowledge Wave conference, Professor Anne Salmond pointed to the worrying trends. Very few low-decile students made it to the university's doors, and Maori and Pacific students were typically from those schools. Even when they did get in, they weren't succeeding; Maori and Pacific completion rates are 1.3 times lower than Pakeha and Asian. Too many were starting from too far behind.

A university task force noted last year that "neither New Zealand nor the University of Auckland can stand by and let the current pattern of school achievement and subsequent access to university education continue.

"In Auckland the demographic projections alone make it imperative that more students from disadvantaged or under-represented groups gain access to higher education. These are the most rapidly growing demographic groups, and it is in the interest of universities and the community to ensure that access is widened."

This is easier said than done. How exactly should the university go about righting the wrongs of the world?

At the law faculty, for example, 1300 first-year students were admitted this year under an open-entry system that's supposed to give more kids from disadvantaged or under-represented communities a fighting chance to get into law.

The old entry system tended to disproportionately favour kids from the wealthier schools and shut out talented students from the poorer suburbs.

With open entry, everyone gets a chance to prove themselves during the first year, before that number is culled to just over 300-320 for the second year. Roughly 10 per cent of those places are held for Maori and Pacific students, though some will get through on general admission, and the quota doesn't get filled if students don't meet a minimum benchmark.

As well, the university runs support programmes for Maori and Pacific students, which include mentoring and extra tutorials during the first year to "fill in the gaps".

But not everyone's happy about that. Recently, the law faculty had to shut down an online discussion node after a few students took exception to the "preferential measures" for Maori and Pacific students. According to a senior law lecturer, the discussion became "hateful".

But did they have a point? Law lecturer Mohsen al Attar, who runs a workshop for Pacific students, says the university has an ethical and moral responsibility, as well as a legal one, to ensure more Maori and Pacific students succeed.

He argues that the concept of equal opportunity is meaningless if students from disadvantaged backgrounds aren't given the academic and pastoral support to take advantage of opportunities.

As Karena Lyons, the Pasifika academic co-ordinator has found. Since setting up an Honours Club in 2006 to encourage Pacific students to aim for the LLB honours programme - which takes the top 20 per cent of those 300 or so law students - the number of Pacific honours students has increased 600 per cent. And half of them are quota students.

"That totally proves the point that the talent was there all along," she says. "We just needed to provide the right kind of support."

But isn't it unfair not to focus solely on merit? Maybe not, as Malcolm Gladwell posits in his book, Outliers. Merit may amount to nothing more than a fortuitous set of circumstances; even a genius with an IQ higher than Einstein's may amount to nothing if he had the bad luck to be born poor.

Gladwell cites a survey by the University of Michigan Law School, which has an admissions scheme for racial minorities similar to Auckland's. He writes that when the university looked at how well the minority students did after graduating, they found that they were just as successful as the white graduates, by every measure.

As Professor Mason Durie of Massey University has said: "Merit appears to mean that academic criteria should be the sole determinant on admission. The need for a non-Maori student with high grades to forfeit a place to a Maori student with lower grades seems wrong to those who associate academic performance with academic right.

"However, successful educational outcomes depend on many factors apart from earlier academic achievement.

"Moreover, the purpose of ethnically based preferential entry schemes is not simply to have more Maori or Pacific doctors, but for educational institutions to make a contribution to society.

"Education has both personal and public benefits, and according to the charters of New Zealand universities it is the public good which is to be accorded high priority."

* tapu.misa@gmail.com