WA ministers question ‘unconditional’ uni offers

WA Minister for Education Tony Buti has made it clear to universities that he does not appreciate their lack of transparency in handing out unconditional early entry offers to secondary students. The minister expressed his concern in parliament on August 30 when opposition education spokesperson Peter Rundle asked about the status of early offers across Western Australian universities. Dr Buti said it is "difficult to get this information out of the universities." "They are telling me that they are not doing unconditional offers, but I am hearing otherwise from other people," he said. "If I knew, as a 16- or 17-year-old, that I could get into university without worrying about what my exam results would be, I would not have been studying two or three hours a night to ensure that I got a good aggregate score." Universities Australia (UA) chief, Catriona Jackson, told Campus Review each university assesses student applications against a range of criteria, including a student's academic results or a written endorsement from their teacher or principal. "High-performing students apply for early offers because it gives them certainty, but it isn’t a free pass," she said. "Offers are typically conditional on a student finishing Year 12 and achieving a good ATAR, placing the onus firmly on the student to keep working hard until the end of school." An unconditional university offer would guarantee a year 12 student a place in a course with no further requirements, including finishing high school, to fulfil before accepting. Conditional offers state the specific requirements a student would have to meet before accepting a course offer and each university's early entry scheme is different. The University of Western Australia's website states they do not provide unconditional early entry offers. Their conditional offers are extended by predicting a student's ATAR using their year 11 exam results. The University of South Australia and University of Queensland have a 'guaranteed entry' scheme that uses actual or predicted year 12 grades and a minimum ATAR to secure a student's spot in a course before they sit their final exams. Other universities, such as Wollongong and Murdoch, say their conditional offers require students to complete year 12 and be eligible for an HSC, but not to achieve a specific ATAR. The University of NSW offers select courses with lowered ATAR requirements, and students can apply for early entry into select courses at the University of Technology Sydney but a minimum ATAR is not stated as a requirement. Mr Rundle's question was also about whether universities from eastern states were sending out "predatory offers" earlier than those in WA. "I know that New South Wales and Victoria have made noises that their universities are not engaging in unconditional offers, but the evidence is still a bit sketchy on that," Dr Buti said. Dr Buti's concerns urged him to send a letter to each year 12 student in WA earlier this year, after a dramatic drop in student ATAR interest, encouraging them to stay focused during their year 12 course. "ATAR is not the only pathway and I am not saying that it should be the only pathway," he said. "I was trying to communicate that students who have the capacity and ability to do ATAR should be doing ATAR generally, although sometimes that might not be the case. "What we were finding was that not only discouragement by particular schools but also the fact that universities were offering unconditional early offers was affecting the motivation of people to remain on the ATAR pathway." As a result of this, the minister has initiated a post-secondary pathway inquiry led by a group of "esteemed educationalists" to investigate room for opportunity within the Western Australian tertiary pathways model.