I am just flabbergasted.

To brand a university as 'elitist' for restricting entry to people who are intelligent!

What's next, branding the Olympics elitist for rejecting men who cant run 100m in under 1 minute?

One can understand the Student Union protecting their customer base, it's purely economic, although from my experience those disposed to joining an organisation don't have such a firm grip on reality, but the Greens must really not even be embarrassed to admit they really think anyone who cant even attain a ATAR of 80 should be at University.

Is it just me, or does anyone else think they should raise it to 90!

I heard on the radio this morning there are some courses where a rank of 50 will do.

If you can only manage an ATAR of 50, you really have no business feeling entitled to the government wasting money attempting to educate you any further. It's simply Preposterous.

Houellebecq please explain the ATAR system.

OI Queensland we have the "OP score". These range from 1 to 25, thus lower than 12 is below average.

Would you believe some courses are going as low as 15 to fill their numbers. The environmental science course often has students from down to 16, for a B.Sc. for gods sake. The math level rarely reaches senior high school.

It is definitely time to cut the university sector by 50%. If they have anyone who could understand the concept, they wouldn't like that I guess.

"What is most important to remember about the ATAR is it is not a measure of intellect or capacity at university, it is simply an entry point and from there students can go on to do very well," said [National Union of Students] president Jade Tyrrell. "We are concerned they're pre-occupied with an elitist attitude, and we're also worried about budget lines taking priority over student equity and access."

It would seem with reasoning such as that, the UNSW is not alone in being pre-occupied with an elitist attitude...

So too apparently is the National Union of Students. Otherwise they wouldn't need a 'president' would they Jade Tyrrell?

Universities today have become big business - and major
changes in universities will continue.
Who knows what the future will entail. Many traditional
fields of study are bypassed others are falling into
disarray. ATAR cut offs were previously determined by
demand for a course and the number of places available.
High entrance scores does not always mean success at university.
Many students who did well at high school where they were
often spoon-fed to get the required results did not do
well at university where they were left to fend for
themselves.

It is the same mentality that seeks to defend teachers when anyone suggests teachers should be of high calibre and require a higher ATAR for entry into a Teaching Degree. As though the suggestion is somehow attacking the profession. One would think that arguing for a higher calibre of teaching, a higher ATAR and (ideally) higher salary would indeed be a confirmation of the importance of teachers.

In an aspirational society a university degree is now considered a necessary accessory. The dumbing down of universities and its consequences do not seem to make a mark on the inevitable outrage register.

There is an odd paradigm emerging. While on one hand there is much said about the value of an educated society, the one-size-fits-all approach is doing more to devalue education.

Access to tertiary education should not be elitist and those who reach the necessary standards should be afforded every opportunity to attend. However, making the entry levels so low makes a mockery of the educated society and devalues the role of other institutions like TAFE and the old Advanced College system which all had a place in providing a variety of options for a variety of aptitudes and skills.

People are not all the same and thus neither should be the educational institutions.

PS: I can't imagine you being 'flabergasted' Houlley. :)

The student's bank balance is far more important to unis than their ATAR. Any multi-cellular organism with a pulse is accepted into the university system at some level, provided they can pay their way.

Academic merit is passe and all that is required is money and aspiration. There are too many students doing worthless uni courses designed to meet their low academic abilities who should be in more hands-on TAFE courses and/or the workforce, IMO.

Houellebecq, not only was I flabbergasted, I was mortified, nay I was personified, not to mention cheiloproclitic, as well it aroused my lachanophobia. It did in general make me preantepenultimate by the total belacterfication of the whole repretenablity of the total pernastices of the jennaticy of the totaloiternicy of the matter at hand. Do you agree with my salbertation of the procrastination? If you do, you are as silly as I am. LOL.

Paul1405... you make it sound like you're so bound up with your ideas you need to take a prolixitive suppository...

It's a ranking Hasbeen. I think it's like the TER before it, a way of ranking students. They don't let anyone know how they actually calculate it, it's like the recipe for KFC.

I assume this secrecy is so people are not appalled by how the different subjects are scaled, and so students cannot use this information to make choices on which subjects lead to higher ATARs.

'The calculation of the ATAR is a complex process that begins with scaling the raw HSC marks and ends with ranking students among their Year 7 cohort.'

http://www.uac.edu.au/undergraduate/faq/atar-calculation.shtml

I find it curious that they rank Year 12 HSC students against year 7 students.

Apparently it is not compulsory to do Mathematics, but it is compulsory to do English. Weird. Why would they require English? My partner reckons most of the full fee paying students manage to complete courses barely being able to speak English at all.

Anyone want a B Arts? ATAR of 50 required.

Career opportunities: Examples include positions in administration, public service, management, welfare management, and a pathway to teaching.

http://www.uac.edu.au/undergraduate/courses/midyear/ltu/183010.html

WmTrevor, I took your advice, and for all the good it did me I could have shoved the bloody things up my ass. Gee, those suppository are hard to swallow, I took the jumbo pack of a 100, better to be safe than sorry. maybe next time I'll take them with water. what do ya think?

"We are concerned they're pre-occupied with an elitist attitude, and we're also worried about budget lines taking priority over student equity and access."

Haha Trev. Now, the NUS wouldn't possibly be pre-occupied with their own budget lines (compulsory fees * no of students) taking priority over the standard of education now would they?

Student equity and access.
I can see three possible scenarios.

1. Greater access leads to more students failing - waste of money
2. Greater access leads to lowering the standard so the same amount of students pass.
3. 'Elitism' leads to maintaining or increasing the standard while the same amount of students pass.

I am flabergasted pelican. I suppose it's easier to lower the bar and call ourselves educated. Imagine if we applied the logic to money. Lets have the government print lots of money and give everyone $100k check, to increase access and equity, so everyone is rich!

Paul1405, you sound discombobulated.

The ATAR requirements for any really worthwhile university subject should be set at a level that ensures the applicants have the at least the ability to complete a full and demanding curriculum covering the necessary understanding of the specific subject.

I have a mental ranking for engineering subjects with electrical and electronics at or near the top followed by mechanical. I do not value the less intellectually demanding applied engineering type courses nearly as highly. Yet in one University in NSW the ATAR for electrical engineering is about 10 marks lower than it is for civil.

Why? Probably because the electrical engineering course is so difficult that not enough applicants want to make the effort; there are too many much easier courses available all of which are much less valuable to the society which funds the bulk of university costs.

It may be difficult to find someone adequate to fill a position. Heard the circus man who was shot from a cannon retired. The position was left vacant because they could find no one of his calibre.

Dear Houellebecq,

Let's break this down.

When I last looked at this topic the local elite private school near us managed to get 1/3 of its students achieving an ATAR of 90 and above. Many of its students are drawn from the Western Districts. In our closest sizable Western District town the public school did not have a single student getting 90 and above.

This means that a huge proportion of publicly subsidised, high end, degree places are taken up by private school children.

The public school my kids went to is deemed a lower/socio economic campus with a disproportionate number of students not moving on to university. As a result some universities give a certain number of students from these schools a boost by adding between 4 to 10 marks to their ATAR scores. There is also a loading for kids from rural areas.

These are some of the inequities Gillard's Gonski reforms were designed to address.

By making a blanket entry mark pathways for disadvantaged students (read many public school students) at UNSW will be reduced. It is elitist.

My child has the university place she wanted because of the reforms already put in place by the then Gillard government. She is thankfully doing well but many of those students she started with have left. The attrition seems to be highest among her private school compatriots.

It would be marvellous to have a system where no schools required an ATAR leg up to have their students enjoying the benefits of an university education. We should support any decent initiatives to achieve this.

'It would be marvellous to have a system where no schools required an ATAR leg up to have their students enjoying the benefits of an university education. We should support any decent initiatives to achieve this.'

About the only sensible thing you've said.

'By making a blanket entry mark pathways for disadvantaged students (read many public school students) at UNSW will be reduced. It is elitist.'

They should be reduced if they have failed to pass the appropriate criteria. So you would rather kid yourself. I see no reason to change the measurements to fit a reality you want. Fix the schools that don't produce students of a decent quality, or run university entrance on IQ and aptitude tests alone.

I find it a ridiculous exercise to attempt to level out ATAR scores, sabotaging your measurement criteria to fit an agenda.

I would much rather spend the resources on children at year 7-12 to make them able to attain the proper measure for university entrance, than to allow them to fail, 'scale' their marks, allow them into university, and waste more resources 'educating' them further.

BTW: Rich private school kids drop out of uni in higher numbers as they really didn't want to be there in the first place, whereas any public school kid that actually makes it has to be pretty intelligent having succeeded with the violent, non-caring apathetic anti-social environment they have navigated.

Rich kids drop out as they have other options. They can join Daddy's company, they can make more money by selling drugs to richer kids and often it's about the age they finally decide to rebel against their pushy but emotionally distant parents, which they can do safely knowing their parents will continue to pick up the tab.

'The public school my kids went to is deemed a lower/socio economic campus with a disproportionate number of students not moving on to university.'

So the children of people from the unfortunate in society with fetal alcohol syndrome are as intelligent, even after more commonly dysfunctional upbringings, than the children of the high achievers?

Without being a snob in any way, it is undeniable that people who have been smart enough, even if corrupt, to make a better living, are more likely with the genetics to be the more intelligent.

Maybe you have a different view of university. I don't think a university degree is needed for a lot of the vocations that seem to require a university degree. I also think there is nothing wrong with not having a university degree and accepting you're just not that smart. A lot of lovely, valuable people in the world are as dumb as dogsh1t, happier than a lot of people with much higher IQs, and with a better quality of life.

Money isn't everything. The big advantage of money seems to be as a vehicle to fence yourself away from some truly damaged individuals in this world.

Whitlam started all this low entry level stuff when he started building socialist universities like Macquarie and Woolongong where anybody could go and the taxpayer pick up the tab.

Numerous studies have shown that there is little
or no relationship between educational achievement
and job performance or productivity. For example,
good grades in a graduate school of medicine or
education are poor predictors or whether someone
will become a good doctor or teacher.

The fact is that the skills required to get an A grade
or a High Distinction in a university course on
anatomy or educational philosophy are not the same as
the skills needed to deal with a medical emergency or an
unruly junior high school class. Most people pick up the
necessary skills on the job, not in the classroom, and
the characteristics that make for a successful career
(such as initiative, leadership, drive, negotiating ability,
willingness to take risks, and persuasiveness) are not taught
in the universities. It seems that the universities produce
graduates with any number of educational credentials but
with few specifically job-related skills.

In fact, many people never put the specific content of their
tertiary education to direct use in their jobs, and many
of the country's graduates actually work in fields they
consider unrelated to their major subjects.

On the whole, however, a higher credential means higher
earnings, simply because of the value the job markets places
on it.

Ignoring the clever use of 'prolixitive' Paul1405, or not comprehending it?

"...maybe next time I'll take them with water. what do ya think?" Really doesn't matter. Next time, just take them out of the foil packet before ingress.

Houellebecq, the NUS has no motive to improve the 'quality' of tertiary students but they certainly have an interest in increasing the number of them (which interestingly is the opposite of what Hilmer was saying in the article http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/unsw-branded-elitist-for-setting-atar-benchmark-of-80-20130719-2q8v0.html).

Of course, the NUS attitude may change if students become too dim to know how to pay the union fees.

david f, I heard the position was left vacant following the tragic accidents of the applicants not aiming high enough.

Dear Houelle,

Please excuse me for not engaging at this time with your typical brand of nasty, bilious trolling and instead deal with points pertinent to the issue.

You wrote;

“I find it a ridiculous exercise to attempt to level out ATAR scores, sabotaging your measurement criteria to fit an agenda.”

My 'agenda' is a fair go for all Australian kids, many of whom will have a potential place at university snatched up by what are essentially queue jumpers. What is yours?

I have no problems with the more wealthy paying for a full fee paying place for their child at university. What I object to is my taxes subsidising a government supported place for those who are there only because of a large amount of money was spent to thrust them up the queue.

I think it is entirely in keeping with that notion of a fair go that disadvantage is not the major determinate of a kid's chance to access a university place made possible from the common weal. I am fully supportive of measures designed to achieve this objective.

Only a mean-spiritedness, not in keeping with the ethos that grew this nation, would want anything different.

Gees, now I'm doing it.

'I am fully supportive of measures designed to achieve this objective.'

As am I. I think we actually want the same thing csteele. We disagree on the measures. I want to identify problems in the education well before university age.

Sorry you didn't take the bait so much as I would have liked though.

I am a proponent of a fully public system, or a system that barely pays lip service to supporting private schools. I would be happy to bear the increased costs as they line up with my ideals. Wherever we can ensure children at least start on equal footing it is worth the investment. Tertiary education is another matter entirely. It should be elite by design, not par for the course for any passingly functional middle class kid.

If you reject the governments school system, suit yourself, but you can bloody well pay for whatever alternative arrangements you come up with. A fully public system is the only way to ensure that each child gets equal opportunity to quality education, as the involved, eloquent, politically powered richer parents without drug dependencies keep the bastards honest, and their children allow a critical mass of students not in the business of totally sabotaging the learning environment.

I agree with an egalitarian education system, but I believe that life is about passing tests, not special treatment for sob stories. I don't believe in assessment based measures, I believe the learning process should allow for mistakes, but by the time the test comes, you should objectively show you have attained the required level of understanding and competency.

I believe there should be a standard that is to be achieved to attain the privilege for the community to fund a high level of education for a citizen. If too many citizens from any demographic fail to pass that is a different issue.

I think on the whole it is all the fault of business. See the trick is to get the government to educate the employees to move the cost away from business.

So, the butcher doesn't take apprentices, he expects the tax payer to pay for a university trained 'meat scientist', all the while he claims his degree educated employees cost too much to pay, and claims his Porsche, hookers and Christmas party as tax deductions.

It's all ok though, as he's doing us all a favor by employing people at minimum wage.

Everything is a 'cost on business', will, 'increase unemployment', or is just basically an impost on the 'entrepreneur' to rip us off blindly.

Still, it's a true test of intelligence to work the system like that. The galling thing for me is the doin' us a favour bit. Just ask rehctub.

We'll all be rooned if we go back to TAFE and training on the job, with University left for the really intelligent people that invent things, rather than OH&S managers.

Dear Houelle,

You wrote;

“I think we actually want the same thing csteele. We disagree on the measures.”

I'm not even sure that we entirely disagree even on those.

But there will be a generation of primarily public school kids who without some assistance with ATAR scores now will miss out. These are good kids, struggling in a poorly funded system, and if some sort of affirmative action is required as an interim until we get the system sorted out then so be it.

Hopefully we can get past what my daughter had to put up with, things like class biology films on VHS constantly interrupted by the teacher explaining why key points were not current any more, plus some really shoddy relief teachers.

I am constantly surprised just how much more responsible this generation is than mine. We are failing them.

I have sat and listened to the aspirations of my daughter's friends gradually diminish, especially in their VCE year. For the vast majority an ATAR of 80, the base UNSW score, is just a fantasy, achievable by only a few. Most of these kids work 2-3 nights a week (some of the money going to support single parent families), do not have access to tutors, nor in many cases tertiary educated parents. How are they meant to compete with a Melbourne Grammar student without some form of assistance with their score? Or have we given up the notion that they ever should?

We need to get fair dinkum as a nation about Gonski and I will say that State governments, who seem to be finding less and less money for public education, despite the enormous growth of the private sector, probably need to just get out of the way and leave it to the federal government.

I'm not sure funding will be a panacea csteele. I went to one of the roughest schools in Sydney, and I have seen first hand some of the poor monkeys that never had a chance, and hate the world and want to do harm to the kids that are attempting to get an education.

Middle class parents have fled this environment, putting a gate around their kids via their private schools and leaving public schools as Ghettos for the rest. There are some smart kids with good parents in the public system, some teachers trying to fight the good fight, but they need help. The problem is the previously middle class have abandoned them and are sacrificing their whole family life in a lot of cases to drudge through and afford a ridiculously priced private education.

If we were smarter and more courageous, we could have it so the vast majority of these parents could have a good education for free, while paying just a little more tax. It may also involve a mechanism for ejecting the worst 10% into some other system to deal with all the tragedy and abuse and neglect in those kids lives.

A class with 10% disruptive, with better resources can be dealt with. A class like my school with 60-70% disruptive kids, well, it takes skill and courage just to duck and dive and go home in one piece let alone get good grades.

The quality of public schools will also reflect the area, so you will never really get an even playing field, as when parents select their house, they are buying a better public education, just by the demographics of the more affluent area.

It needs to be turned on it's head. A lot of resources are needed for these ghetto schools, and the sickening thing to me is the government giving money to those who have abandoned the system and have the resources to pay 20k a year per kid, while skimping on those kids where school is the only chance to improve their lot and intervene in their dire lives.

There are two different discussions here.

One is an egalitarian public school system where no child is disadvantaged by demographic (or other) factors.

However, a quality education system does not necessarily mean everyone should get a degree. Surely that has potential to devalue education and denigrate the idea of a tiered education system that focuses on different skill sets and aptitudes. Australia already has issues with lack of skills in certain areas due to past and present governments lack of attention to trades etal.

Should a university degree be the new minimum standard? Surely the goal here is to ensure access to university on merit regardless of wealth or class. The handing out of degrees willy nilly reeks of the problems of tertiary education commercialism. Lack of government funding means universities have to raise funds through selling education as a product. Merit has no part in that type of capitalist model.

The aim should be not to reduce standards because that defeats the purpose. The fact that some universities now hold Remedial English classes highlights the problem.

Attention to early childhood education equals better outcomes and should be the priority. A strong early education also gives people the best tools to be able to meet university entry standards.

This idea that a university education is for all, is an aspect of what I can only label as aspirationalism (is that a word?). The idea that everyone must aspire to a university level education even if it means society will ultimately be the poorer for it.

An egalitarian society should value all roles including those that do not require a university education. An egalitarian society recognises that working class jobs have value and serve a great purpose. It has come to the point where people feel embarrassed to say they don't have a degree or that they are a secretary, a cleaner or a factory worker. Where would society be without people occupying all manner of jobs and performing all manner of necessary functions.

Essential we are creating a level of elitism out of a desire to be egalitarian.

My mate is studying at University to be a golf Pro. Says it all really.