i came across an interesting article 2day in the afr...
http://afr.com/premium/articles/2004/12/28/1103996547993.html
but its in the premium section, so ill post it here...
The height of arrogance
Dec 29
Sophie Morris
Ron McCallum, the dean of law at the University of Sydney, has a personal reason for wishing the entrance scores for law would descend from their lofty heights.
He presides over a faculty that requires prospective students to achieve one of the highest cut-off scores in the country.
But McCallum, who has been blind from birth, fears he may not have made the grade if students in his day had to achieve the near-perfect scores now required to study law in a subsidised place at the "sandstone" institution.
"As a disabled dean, I'm concerned that our high UAIs [universities admission index] make it almost impossible for disabled students to gain entry," he says. "I actually want to bring the UAI down ... but it really depends on how many places we can offer and that's set by Canberra."
The cut-off scores for entry are largely a function of supply and demand and vary from year to year, depending on the number of places available, the number of applicants for each course and the quality of their applications.
The fluctuations in cut-offs can make the new year an anxious time for aspiring students waiting to find out if they have qualified for their preferred courses.
In recent years, the scores required for entry to a higher education contribution scheme (Hecs) place at some universities have climbed to levels that have little to do with the academic ability required for study as increasing demand for a degree has outstripped growth in the number of student places.
Combined law has been one of the most sought-after courses, along with veterinary science and medicine where it is still taught as an undergraduate degree.
Even courses in media and communications at some institutions can require scores above 98 (out of a possible 100) as was the case at the University of Sydney last year.
When the cut-offs are revealed in January, comparisons will again be made and conclusions drawn about which institutions and courses are the most popular and prestigious.
But the cut-offs don't tell the whole story.
In academic circles there is disquiet about the high level of entry requirements for school leavers. There are also allegations that some universities are deliberately inflating the scores required for undergraduate courses to stoke their reputations and promote themselves as prestigious and exclusive institutions.
These complaints come from unexpected quarters, including Gavin Brown, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, which routinely requires some of the highest cut-off scores in the country.
"You are able to manipulate your cut-off if you want to play that game," he says. "This is a serious problem. We do not do it but many others do."
Brown, like his dean of law, is concerned that the high scores required by the university are shutting out school leavers who have the academic ability to study but fall short by a grade or two. "What has happened to us is we have been pushed higher and higher in our cut-offs, which is worrying because they bear less and less relationship to the capacity required to do the program," he says.
His point is that while the University of Sydney does not wish to entrench such academic exclusivity, the perceived superiority of his university means demand is genuinely very strong and therefore forces the university to keep high entry requirements.
He says that though his institution is doing what it can to bring down the scores, others are engineering their intakes to push their cut-offs even higher.
Brown explains how universities can inflate their cut-off scores by limiting the number of places offered to school leavers and recent school leavers and accepting more mature-aged applicants who come in through a different process.
This restricts the supply of places feeding into the supply-and-demand formula for determining the cut-offs. Fewer places means tougher competition and higher cut-off scores.
Brown says the University of Sydney has gradually increased the proportion of recent school leavers that it accepts in an attempt to keep the cut-offs in check.
Last year 72.6 per cent of new undergraduate places at the university were offered to recent school leavers and 27.4 per cent to mature-aged students.
Many universities are coy about releasing statistics that show what proportion of their students are recent school leavers who must meet the published cut-off scores.
But the University of Technology Sydney confirmed that last year 54 per cent of new undergraduate Hecs places went to recent school leavers and 46 per cent to other applicants.
More than one-quarter of all school leavers (28.6 per cent) go straight on to university, according to the Department of Education, Science and Training. Thousands of others, however, will find they don't have the grades to qualify for the university courses they want.
The rising cut-offs for courses such as law have contributed to the perception that students who achieve top marks are short-changing themselves if they opt to study anything else.
Rosalind Croucher, dean of law at Macquarie University, says this can result in high-achieving students being pressured to apply for courses for which they are ill-suited. "Parents get caught up in the hype about this," she says.
"They think if their child gets a top score, they need to use it to enrol in law or medicine. They think they must not waste the score."
Croucher is annoyed at the assumption that a lower cut-off makes the courses Macquarie offers somehow less prestigious than those at the University of Sydney and the University of NSW.
"Parents seem to think if a law course requires a UAI of 99.5 it must be better than one which takes students at 95.5. That is quite incorrect," she says.
"Any of the leading law schools can make their UAI artificially high by restricting the number of school-leaver applicants and expanding the number of non-school-leaver applicants.
"It bears no necessary resemblance to the quality or prestige of the course."
Federal Education Minister Brendan Nelson thinks the cut-offs are often too high but he also has another point. He is aware of the criticism that fee-paying students are compromising quality and wants to prove that these students, who gain entry below the cut-offs, are not rich and stupid but are capable of meeting the academic standards.
To make this point, he has asked universities to set and publish on the internet a score that reflects the academic ability needed to study each course - a score below which they will not accept students.
Vice-chancellors are divided about the merits of this approach. The official line from the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee is that fluctuations in demand make it impossible to set a minimum score for each course.
They agreed to publish a minimum score for each campus this year, which is available on the internet, but the AVCC is resisting Nelson's request that they do this on a course-by-course basis next year.
Brown, however, agrees it is a good idea and says his university is working towards implementing this for next year.
"We believe that would be 'fair trading' - telling people what standards are required at different institutions," he says.
This year there is some good news for prospective students who are anxious about whether they will make the grade.
Around the nation there has been a drop in the number of applications to study, which observers attribute to a number of factors, including fee increases, low unemployment, a surge in vocational education and training and a market correction after a spike in applications in the previous year.
Whatever the cause of the decline in the number of people applying to study, university admissions centres are cautiously predicting that this may bring down the cut-offs required for some courses.
"We don't like to give them false hope," says Kim Paino from the NSW and ACT Universities Admissions Centre. "But it is possible that cut-offs may be a little lower this year."
pretty much answered my question on how they can 'artificially' raise their UAI cut offs...found the last paragraphs interesting as well...but as it said, im not getting my hopes up!
