While listening to the radio in my hired car in Durban
earlier this year, I enjoyed and interview with a senior official from the
Durban University of Technology. He
explained, in some detail, the challenges that DUT faced with respect to applicant
numbers, and the extent to which they exceeded available places. I enjoyed his responses, because they illustrated
just how helpless his institution was in the face of growing numbers of
qualifying applicants versus its limited capacity. The same reality faces several other
institutions nationwide. This, then, is
the one dimension of competition: sheer growth in numbers who want to be
admitted, as opposed to the limited, static number of available places.
However, in order to fully grasp the competition for places,
one has to understand another phenomenon which has manifested itself in the
National Senior Certificate, commonly referred to as ‘grade creep’. Grade creep is not new, and not limited to
South Africa. It refers to the extent to
which examination candidates achieve higher and higher results. Therefore, it is far more common in 2013 for
NSC candidates to achieve 7 scores above 80% in their final examinations than
it was several years ago. I am reminded
of a conversation I had with a guidance counsellor at a northern suburbs school
in Cape Town over ten years ago. She
shared with me that the staff at her school expected 7-8 ‘A’ aggregate passes,
and more than 20 grade 12s reached that achievement that year! That is the effect of grade creep.
The combined effects of the increased numbers of would-be
students, combined with grade creep, create other challenges for institutions. They need to be able to discriminate between
applicants who appear to be very similar in terms of their performance at
school. One way to do this is to
introduce other measures of performance, such as the National Benchmark Tests. One of the benefits of using a different
measure such as the NBTs, is that applicants who appear to be performing at the
same level in school examinations, will, using a different assessment tool, be separated, so that the
stronger applicants may be identified.
Another concern for institutions is to ensure that their
incoming classes are representative of the population. This is not particular to South Africa. Institutions in countries around the world, including
the United States of America, Australia and France, to name a few, have had to
introduce measures to produce more representative classes. In such cases, affirmative measures exist to
make institutions accessible to minority groups. In South Africa, affirmative action has a
different role: to make institutions accessible for the majority of the
population. I will not go into the
reasons for this huge task here, except to say that one of the manifestations
of this need is, after even 20 years, a most unequal school system.
So, back to competing for a place. My earlier comment, that I did not understand
the confusion I continue to witness among the public, points to the reason why
you should raise your awareness about the competition factor. While you may be among the top achievers at your
school, the reality is that, relative to other applicants for a place in the
same programme, at the same institution, you are not as strong as them.
Understanding competition means that you will better prepare
to compete for a place in higher education.
You will not look at your own performance, as many school students do,
and be content that you are doing okay, and that admission to higher education
is a formality. You may even be
motivated to work much harder, and do your best in the final examinations.
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