Editorial: Tougher uni entry makes perfect sense

Photo / Mark Mitchell

According to the Quality Public Education Coalition, New Zealand is going to become a "thick country".

This, says chairwoman Liz Gordon, will be the consequence of several popular universities restricting places to students who gain top marks at school from next year.

She could hardly be more wrong. For a host of reasons, the tougher admission rules at Auckland, Massey, Victoria and Otago universities make perfect sense - and will, if anything, enhance those institutions and the value of their students.

Most broadly, New Zealand's participation rate in higher education is above the OECD average.

If, as QPEC says, other countries are trying desperately to increase the number of people at universities, they are playing catch-up. Further, university education is, and probably always has been, too expensive to allow it to be treated as the entitlement of every citizen.

The Government, in funding a set number of enrolments, is signalling that costs must be kept under control. That is only reasonable given that big-ticket items cannot be afforded ongoing largesse.

Some universities have chosen to carry the cost of thousands of extra students since the recession, which generated a big increase in the demand for places.

That is their choice, but several are clearly finding this unsustainable.

Auckland, for its part and for the best of reasons, last year began restricting the numbers admitted to all undergraduate courses. The criticism was widespread, as will be the case now.

Auckland, it was claimed, would become "elitist" and there would be fewer places for social groups under-represented in higher learning.

The latter fear has proved groundless. Specific allowances for the likes of Maori or Pacific Islanders and students with disabilities have been retained. More important, Auckland was, quite rightly, setting out to embrace standards high enough to place it among the world's top universities.

The elite, if you like. One aspect of this process was attracting better students. Another was reducing its undergraduate population, so it could have more students pursuing higher degrees.

Now Auckland says it plans to tighten its limits even further by increasing entry-standard levels in several of its programmes. It wishes, in part, to grow more slowly. But it has also restated its intention of "improving the overall quality of the student body and increasing our proportion of postgraduate students".

The logical outcome of this quest will be that it attracts not only the best of students but also well-respected academics from around the world. It, and the country, will benefit as a consequence.

It has been estimated that next year's restrictions could stop up to 3500 young people studying where they want. The number might be less, however, because of the easing of the recession, changes to the student loan scheme (which would mean new residents and Australians have to live in the country two years to qualify), and funding for 765 extra places.

More could also be done to ensure school-leavers do not lose out to "mature" students with lesser qualifications, whose number has soared. The lower pass rate of these older students tells its own tale.

Clearly, it also makes no sense for school-leavers to be denied entry on the basis that their NCEA pass rates are not high enough but to be welcomed at 20 under the special admissions scheme.

Quite probably, the standard of many of the country's universities dropped as they competed for an increasing number of students in any number of courses.

The higher standards that will be an inevitable result of fewer places being available will arrest any such trend. Brighter graduates, not a thick country, will be the final product.