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July 03, 2003
Affirmative Action
This is a copy of an article written by me and posted at Slumbering Pierrot. A copy is posted here because I still cannot see (or link to) the entry appearing on blogspot. Check that site for comments and discussion.
Let me save some of you from having to think: I'm agin it. So if you are in favour of affirmative action don't read this post, skip down and read about cobras and rabbits which is much more interesting and then I'll only have to speak to the converted ....
OK. Now they're gone, lets get stuck into affirmative action in higher education. It's been all the news with various legal beagles fluffing on with various opinions but I want to go back in time to the early 80's in Australia. At that time, Australia had a fairly open university entrance policy. For local students, education at university was (by and large) free apart from various (relatively) small charges for student unions and clubs and things. There was a fairly generous system of scholarships (which started with the Colombo Plan) for talented students in neighbouring countries (particularly Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and India). There was also the "overseas student scheme" which meant anyone with lots of money could send their kids to Australia for the last two years of high school and then (hopefully) on to University where (being non-local) they paid fees which enabled the universities to offer more courses and options. Entrance to university itself was based on merit, you get the marks in high school, apply for courses and off you go. Universities would set the entrance marks based on demand. For example, the year I started it took 419 (out of 500) to do computer science or 340 to do general science (with an option to convert to computer science).
So far, so good! Lots of competition, reasonable chance to go to uni if you worked hard and plenty of choice. Everyone was happy, right? Wrong. There was a segment in the community who were unhappy with "overseas students stealing our places at university". Personal observation: if you didn't work hard, you didn't get in BUT there were ways around that. In particular there were 2nd chance draws, TAFE (repeat higher school certificate) or take a "college" course (diploma) and then apply for advanced standing.
Solution: quotas (affirmative action). An upper bound on the number of overseas students permitted in any course was established (to protect the interests of local students). This led to two entry marks, for example a local student wanting to study medicine might require 450, an overseas student would require 495. Naturally the entry marks for local students fell slightly and they went through the roof for overseas students.
Only one university held out and refused to implement quotas (they were eventually forced to have quotas in medicine and law but no other courses). This naturally meant that a very high proportion of overseas students chose this university (UNSW). In turn this provided additional funding to UNSW that other universities could not access, it established stronger community and international relationships that resulted in UNSW being probably the best known university outside Australia. It also led to some racial-related violence from hate groups like National Action.
What was the point of this story? As one of those who would have benefited from the quota system, I am very proud to say that I got into university by my own merits. Not by the colour of my skin, my religion, my ethnic heritage, or my place of birth. In a reasonably open competition, I won a place at university. I can look back and say: "I earned that!"
Maybe there are places where affirmative action is appropriate but it is working at a symptom (laziness in the case of the students who didn't get into university) not a cause. That means people will always be thinking: "they couldn't have done it on their own". As regards university, you need to encourage the learning early, work on the skills, develop the desire. Then you need to ensure that the university entrance procedure is blind to colour, money, ethnicity, sex or any other discriminative factor - make it purely a matter of ability.
Posted by Ozguru at July 3, 2003 10:07 PM
