Claire Pech – Careers Advisor

Elizabeth Farrelly wrote an interesting article in the weekend papers about a Faculty decision to lower the admission scores at UTS by 10 points for entry into their engineering courses if an applicant was female. She mentioned a lot that was wrong with this process, including a dissection of gender issues and the role of positive discrimination, concluding it was unintelligent and misconceived.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/demeaning-entry-discount-for-women-the-latest-nail-in-higher-education-s-coffin-20190905-p52odh.html#comments

Without getting into the arguments for and against positive discrimination, I was not sure if Elizabeth Farrelly knew that universities always and have always “discounted” marks in order to create more access to courses for the students they are wanting to attract.

An example of this would be:

• If a student achieves a Band 5 or 6 in relevant courses (eg. a Band 6 in Advanced Mathematics can get five Bonus points for engineering courses at UTS, UNSW, etc)
  • https://www.futurestudents.unsw.edu.au/adjustment-factors-hsc-plus
• Discounting marks for Aboriginal students into certain courses, to promote a higher ethnic diversity
  • https://www.nuragili.unsw.edu.au/study/indigenous-admission-scheme
• Portfolio entries to attract more ‘creative’ types over an ATAR for more ‘creative’ degrees (e.g. B. Design at UNSW up to 10 points below)
  • https://artdesign.unsw.edu.au/future-students/portfolio-entry
• Faculty of Engineering Admission Scheme (UNSW will discount their ATAR from 93 to 10 points below if students show aptitudes in the Sciences/Maths and an interest in engineering.
  • https://www.engineering.unsw.edu.au/study-with-us/future-students/faculty-of-engineering-admissions-scheme-feas
• Macquarie University will give all ‘local’ students five bonus points, as they are considered Sydney locals.

The list goes on and on. These are just a few. Discounting the ATAR for women to get in simply makes the course more accessible, it is not in anyway saying that the course is easier, or that women need to be less intelligent to get in. The ATAR is not connected to the intellectual rigour of the course.

One of the highest ATAR courses in the country is for fashion design and I know some astrophysics courses in the 60s. The ATAR simply shows the student demand compared to the supply of places on the course. Just like house prices, if more people want to buy the house, the ATAR goes up!

For an interesting read on the debate and comments about this article please read:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/demeaning-entry-discount-for-women-the-latest-nail-in-higher-education-s-coffin-20190905-p52odh.html#comments

TAFE Open Day

This weekend is the TAFE open day weekend. Please find out more from this link: https://events.tafensw.edu.au/open-day