Back door entry for under-par rich kids to be closed off

CAPA applauds the fourth recommendation of the Senate Committee report, Universities in Crisis, that entry to undergraduate courses simply by virtue of capacity to pay fees should be scrapped.

"In contrast to the current government, the Senate committee recognises that entry mechanisms need to be about quality standards, not revenue opportunities," said CAPA President John Byron today.

"Since the Howard government took office, wealthy students have been able to gain entry to undergraduate courses for which they have otherwise failed to qualify.

"This constitutes flat out discrimination in favour of the wealthy," he argued.

"Not only are the rest of us subject to different rules than those with the cash, but the quality of our academic experience is often compromised in pursuit of a few stray bucks from those who can't cut it in competition with their peers for undergraduate places."

"So much for the Liberal Party's famous commitment to competition policy," Mr Byron observed.

Postgraduate research students are well-placed to assess the negative impact of the provision of domestic fee paying undergraduate places. As casual tutors, postgrads do the bulk of first year close-quarters teaching, and we frequently have to deal with the consequences of this regressive entry policy.

"It is grossly unfair on academics, the student body, and the individuals themselves to place students who are utterly unprepared for the university experience into classrooms and laboratories."

While the school examination score system is itself far from perfect, it is at least an economy based on the right currency - academic achievement. Ability to pay is about the least useful predictor of academic excellence that policy makers could hope to adopt.

"The net impact of the fee paying loophole is a compromise of quality, and this is surely an outcome that any responsible government would wish to avoid," Mr Byron argued.

"Nonetheless, Senator Vanstone, Dr Kemp and their Coalition colleagues have placed quality at serious risk in order to offer desperate universities a dubious replacement for adequate public funding.

"The damage has been most evident in postgraduate coursework education, but there is no doubt that the integrity of our undergraduate offerings has also been at risk."

This recommendation by the Senate committee is a solid first step in restoring individual ability and the public interest as the governing determinants of entry to university courses at all levels of study.

"CAPA looks forward to a similar principle being applied to the area of postgraduate coursework study, which is of ever-increasing importance to Australia's higher education profile and our national employment needs," he concluded.