Idiots: OZschwitz uni expands student selection system

AUSTRALIA'S largest national university has moved away from using year-12 scores to select students, saying character and community service are also important.

The decision by the the Australian Catholic University could prompt other universities to place less emphasis on ENTER scores, which critics insist are a crude measure of suitability for tertiary study.

The university — the largest producer of nursing graduates in Australia and among the top five for teachers — will announce on Tuesday its intention to select candidates based on their community work or "mentality of service", rather than relying solely on an ENTER score. The scheme will operate at the university's six campuses nationally, including Melbourne and Ballarat. Courses available include arts, business, nursing, education and youth work.

"We need to get away from the idea, in selecting people, that intellect is divorced from character. They are two sides of the one coin," university vice-chancellor Greg Craven said.

In next year's intake, up to 50% of undergraduate places will go to students under the Early Achievers Program, with applications open between July and September. Successful students will receive provisional offers by mid-December, a month before everyone else.

To be eligible, students must have completed three semesters of study in years 11 and 12. They must also demonstrate involvement in their community — through school, church, sport or a cultural organisation — and provide a written recommendation from their principal.

Professor Craven said he believed the program was the first in Australia to consider an undergraduate student's contribution to society as part of the application process.

It also tackled his concern that under the ENTER system, many capable students were overlooked. "At the moment universities select students in an impossibly crude way," he said. "We basically bring students in on the basis of a couple of numbers and we have no idea how they are even derived."

Professor Craven said he believed employers would also benefit, as "they want more than a calculator in a mortarboard".

University of Melbourne higher education professor Simon Marginson welcomed the program, saying it would take give selectors a fuller student profile. "Offering students a chance to grow more broadly creates a real opportunity to change the culture," he said.

Australian Catholic University student Sarah Rose, 20, in her second year of a nursing degree, said skills honed through five years of volunteering as a maths tutor and at a soup van were vital for her future career.

"With nursing, I think the best way to develop a therapeutic relationship with a patient is to connect with them," she said.

Last week Paul Sheahan, the outgoing head of Melbourne Grammar, denounced the ENTER score system as a crude instrument. His concerns were echoed yesterday by Bernadette Gigliotti, director of the Career Education Association of Victoria, who said students had missed out on places because of the simplistic selection process.

"We have always understood that there should be multiple ways of selecting students, rather than solely relying on a single figure or a rank," she said.

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