(This article is an edited version of the keynote address delivered to the Queensland
Institute for Educational Research symposium on tertiary selection in August 1986).

In every Australian state there is, or has recently been, a major professional and public debate on higher education selection and Year 12 credentialling. It is, perhaps, the dominant issue in secondary education in Australia at present.

It might be thought that the debate was triggered by a general shortage of places for highly qualified applicants for entry to our universities and colleges. No doubt this was a contributing factor but it is by no means an explanation for the concern which has been expressed throughout Australia. The question of who gets in to higher education is not so much the issue - rather it is who gets in to which particular course and under what conditions. In this event the more the system of higher education is expanded and diversified the more selective will some prestige elements of the system become. For example, the proposal to develop higher education courses on the Gold Coast is welcomed by both State and Commonwealth authorities. But such a development will not reduce the competition for places in major metropolitan institutions, especially in their restricted courses.

Individual applicants are not seeking to get into any course, anywhere, but to a limited number of courses in a few institutions.

The debate on selection has many participants who would generally assist the debate if they would identify the value positions they adopt. It is not a two-sided debate - rather it is a debate with many sides and with several hidden agendas.

Of its participants -

• There is one team whose prime concern is to select students who have demonstrated that they have the best chance of success. The arguments in favour of this are well known - equity and efficiency. In this respect higher education selection is like picking a Commonwealth Games squad - the time trials are all important and we want a team to maximise the number of gold medals. But you can't always trust the time trials, and the placings in the 100 metre secondary dash do not necessarily show true form in the tertiary marathon.

• There are others whose concern for equity leads them to a different conclusion. They suggest that a balanced team is all important. To them equity involves that special consideration be given to groups (or is it individuals) who are presently under-represented. Debaters in this team often quote Aboriginals as an example of a group whose participation is too low and for whom special measures should be taken. There is general acceptance for this view, so far as it relates to Aboriginals. The problem arises when dealing with other groups whose membership is less clear cut and whose disadvantage is less pronounced. For example, a recent ACER study suggests that the sons and daughters of non-English speaking migrants, if taken as a single group, have a university participation rate twice the average of the rest of the population. Working out which sub-groups of migrant children are disadvantaged is therefore a fairly complex task. Those who support special assistance to groups often have difficult membership problems to solve.

• One of the other big debating teams consist of those who argue for a different kind of equity (or fairness). How, they argue, can it be fair for the last few years of secondary education to become so dominated by higher education selection arrangements. This team has two factions. One is the moderates - they don't mind the Year 12 credential being used for broad comparisons of attainment (seven to twenty point scales have been included in some proposals made in other States). These moderates, however, object to the Year 12 credential being used for fine tune discrimination, particularly at the top end of the spectrum. This, of course, puts them at loggerheads with the Deans of Medicine, Law, Dentistry etc. who need such a selector if they are to continue to admit school students to their courses. for these people, Year 12 assessment can be used as an axe to divide the student tree into large lumps but not as a scalpel to take a scraping from the top-most bough.

  The other faction on this side of the debate are those who argue that the whole nature and purpose of upper secondary education is perverted by reducing the outcome to a 3 digit TE score. They would do away with a system which was geared to assisting universities and CAE's to rank order students so that admissions become a simple matter of counting applicants against an order-of-merit list. There is some support for this position when one looks at the destinations of today's Year 12 students.

  Only 20 percent proceed to universities and 20 per cent to CAE's. Surprisingly, a further 20 per cent of Year 12 students proceed to TAFE - these are Australia-wide figures, not Queensland alone. But they indicate the extent to which Year 12 is used by many young Australians for a wide variety of purposes.

  

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• Another major team in the debate is the traditionalists; those who believe in the pursuit of academic excellence as if it were a military target of such value that high casualty rates are warranted. For this group external examinations are seen as being important because (of all things) they are believed to be able to discriminate accurately and objectively between tens of thousands of candidates. For debaters in this team goals such as increasing participation in education are of somewhat doubtful value as they are seen as reducing entry standards and quality .

• Queensland is regarded by many commentators as having the most progressive Year 11 and 12 system of any Australian State, and its Year 11 and 12 retention rates are remarkable given its demographic spread. Some 'southern' academics have made public statements in strong opposition to proposed changes in their own States - the proposed changes would move their States towards the present Queensland arrangement. Some of these statements are extraordinary - they suggest that the whole fabric of higher education would collapse if external exams were not the sole or major measure of Year 12 achievement. They seem unaware that for 10 years or more universities and colleges in Queensland have survived (even thrived) in such an environment.

• Queensland has, in Queensland Tertiary Admissions Centre (QTAC), what is (arguably) the most efficient admission systems in Australia. Certainly it gets its offers out more quickly. In Victoria it has been suggested that the selection process should be more deliberate - be drawn out over several months with counselling etc. There is some support for this in Queensland, too. Before such action is contemplated, however, it would be necessary to undertake some social science research to see if students want and would accept such an arrangement. One reading of the situation is that school leavers want to know quickly what options are open to them. Indeed we might well find that a more drawn out process would be socially regressive because the students from lower SES groups would be diverted more easily into the labour market than those whose path had always been leading to higher education. Today's young people may sympathise with Macbeth who proposed that 'if it were done when 'tis done then t'were well it were done quickly'.

This research has not been replicated in other States and the need for research in the area is clear. Sometimes the inquiries into Year 12 credentialling and related matters call for public submissions as a way of gathering information and views. While such a process is essential to policy development it is not a substitute for well-conducted research. Unsubstantiated opinion can sometimes masquerade as fact if it is quoted and quoted again. There has been relatively little research undertaken on the group which really matters in this debate - those able young Australians who are in two minds about completing a full secondary education, or of continuing to further study. We need to know more about the motivations, aspirations and needs of these 'swinging voters' of education. In particular we must carefully assess the impact of proposed changes on these groups, rather than proceed with change because it appeals to logic, administrative efficiency or to sociological theory. So far as Queensland is concerned the research of Western, Campbell and others provides an essential framework to policy development.

Some international events help to focus the Australia scene. One is the trend to educational conservatism in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere, particularly as those countries are so often held up to us as models. Secondly, there is the possibility that Australia may be following the path of Sweden, whose government made deliberate, well meaning changes to the pattern of tertiary education in an unsuccessful attempt to assist in widening access from lower SES groups. For example, the participation rate of the lowest third of the SES spectrum has been reduced by about half. Beswick concludes that the reasons for the failure of the Swedish initiatives were

• a devaluing of higher education in public esteem
• inadequate curricula in the senior secondary schools
• a lack of encouragement to proceed to higher education (with student loans as the main form of student aid).

In the last three years there has been a remarkable upswing in Year 12 retention. Nevertheless only about one in two young Australians completes a full secondary education. For Queensland the growth in retention has been steady and sustained for over a decade. However, in a number of other States Year 12 retention actually declined during the 1970s.

These statistics reinforce the need for careful market analysis - we must not assume that the welcome growth of the last few years will survive in an unfavourable climate. We must continue to reinforce the benefits of completing a full secondary education.

In 1985 the Commonwealth Department of Education issued a Discussion Paper on Selection for Higher Education (4). The paper was generally well received as a contribution to the debate, although some reactions wrongly assumed it was a manifesto for action. Two aspects have come in for more criticism than others and deserve some response .

First, Queues. Many people in higher education are strongly averse to queues. They tend to overlook the fact that queues of one sort or another are an accepted - perhaps even the prime - selection tool for TAFE in most states and that they have long been a feature of non-government secondary education. The discussion paper is not suggesting queues as a major selection tool, and indeed the possible regressive social effects of queues need some study. However, there could be (in fact are) instances where queues work in higher education. More importantly, queues are a common, and increasing, feature of TAFE because TAFE tends to hold to the theory of open access. Yet TAFE must restrict its entry to some courses for both financial and labour force reasons. Selection to TAFE is virtually uncharted in Australia and it is an area in urgent need of study. As TAFE becomes more and more selective (in its prime courses) there is a real risk of social inequity developing.

Second, Delayed Selection. The idea that entry to all university courses should be delayed until students had undertaken an initial year of liberal or general scientific study was seriously proposed a few years ago by a then Chairman of Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (AVCC). Such extreme propositions are beyond contemplation. However, if the faculties of Law, Medicine, Dentistry etc were to delay selection - as some already do - then finance would be less of a problem. Relatively few students are involved in these disciplines and most of them either do combined degrees (in the case of Law) or undertake substantial general studies components as part of existing professional curriculum. The benefit of delayed selection is that it releases the secondary system from the need to provide rank ordering of students in the top 5 to 10 per cent of the cohort. Given research findings of the type mentioned earlier by Dunn and others, such a proposal has much to commend it on equity grounds. It may also have other benefits, like attracting into medicine, law etc people who have given more mature consideration to the needs and demands of these professions.

The debate on Year 12 curriculum and credentials and higher/tertiary education selection is one with many contestants - some of whom appear to be shedding more heat than light on the issues. We must remember that young people enrolled in Years 11 and 12 are investing their time and effort, and their abilities, in the education system we have now. It is a system which has its faults and can be improved, but before we engage in too much negative and unbalanced criticism of existing structures we should remember that the young people of Australia are listening to what we say.

FOOTNOTES

1. DUNN, T. R. An Empirical Demonstration of Bias in HSC Examinations. Australian Journal of Education, 26(2), 190-203.

2. BESWICK, D.G. Current Issues in Student Selection. Research Working Paper 85.2. Centre for Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne, 1985.

3. HORE, T. & WEST, L. Access and Equity Report No. 5142 Higher Education Advisory and Research Unit, Monash University, 1985.

4. Australia. Commonwealth Department of Education. Selection for Higher Education. A discussion of issues and possibilities by an education portfolio discussion group. CDE, Canberra 1986.

Please cite as: Brewster, D. (1987). Choosing partners for the tertiary selection debate. Queensland Researcher, 3(1), 6-13. http://www.iier.org.au/qjer/qr3/brewster.html