A modest proposal concerning University admissions A majority of applicants for undergraduate admission at the University of Sydney are assessed more or less solely on the basis of their ATAR, and that majority becomes even larger when one only considers domestic applicants. (Hopefully) this is not because the University regards high ATARS as intrinsically worthy, meritous or deserving of an education, but because the University is aware that a high ATAR correlates with performance here. Now I’m going to tell you something that you may find surprising, but which isn’t really surprising at all. The average private school student with an ATAR of 90 performs worse than the average public school student with an ATAR of 90. If you think for a moment, the reasons are quite clear. Private school students receive more resources to help them get a better UAI, but once they get here they’re on a far more even playing field than a public school student. Let’s invent some hypothetical numbers to make this less abstract. Suppose that the public school student with UAI 85 performs as well as the average private school student with a UAI of 90. Now if you accept the premise that there’s no inherent merit in ATAR’s except their capacity to predict performance, is there any good reason why we shouldn’t simply add five points to the UAI of a public school student? Now let’s be clear. This isn’t an adjustment for the purposes of ‘social justice’. It’s purely meritocratic- essentially adjusting the statistical model used for admissions to make it more predictive of academic excellence (in the narrow sense of higher grades). Any flow on effects for social justice, equity or diversity are- so to speak- accidental side effects of a meritocratic mechanism. Indeed, not using this data when it is available is effectively affirmative action on behalf of the rich. What, then, say we?
Posted on: Mon, 03 Nov 2014 23:53:47 +0000
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