ATAR as a university selection tool

What we now know about the other ways to get into university

How do under-represented individuals use alternative pathways to university, and does this lead to student success?

Participation in higher education is on the rise worldwide. This has meant more support for some who traditionally did not attend higher education. One way that has helped has been introducing new pathways to enter higher education, other than the traditional route from secondary education. These pathways include students entering using a VET qualification, or transferring in from another higher education course. They could enter via an enabling program, where students complete a study program before their course, covering important academic skills, such as referencing.  Another route, often used by international students, is undertaking a Diploma with a pathway provider then transitioning into the second year of a degree course. There are other ways to enter, such as portfolio pathways where students access university based on accrued skills, knowledge and experience, or a professional qualification.  These can be popular with mature-age students. There are also access schemes for under-represented groups, such as regional/remote or Indigenous students, and mature-age entry provision which involves completing the Special Tertiary Admissions Test (STAT). 

Not much is known about alternative entry pathways into university. For example, we don’t know how many students have entered through these different routes over time, and how well used the pathways are by under-represented individuals. Also, we don’t know whether those entering via these different pathways do as well academically as those who enter via secondary education.

The study design

Our study focused on seven groups of under-represented students. These were: i) Indigenous students; ii) students with disability; iii) students from a low socioeconomic (SES) background; iv) students from regional and remote areas; v) students from non-English speaking backgrounds (NESB); vi) women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) courses; and vii) mature age students (those aged 25 years and above).

We used a combination of data sources to look into these: i) administrative data on entry pathways from the Higher Education Student Data Collection, sourced from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, and linked data from unit records of Bachelor degree domestic students and the Student Experience Survey provided by the data offices of 16 participating universities in Australia.

Trends in alternative pathways

Secondary education was the dominant pathway at the start of our data series in 2011, with just over half of university students in Australia entering this way. Over the course of the next nine years, however, enrolment via the secondary education gradually declined to 45% in 2019. Contrary to this, higher education course transfers and VET/TAFE award completions gained popularity, increasing from 22% to 24% (higher education courses) and 12% to 13% (VET/TAFE courses) from 2011 to 2019. The group of ‘other’ pathways (pathway providers, enabling programs, access schemes, portfolio entry) increased the most over this time period, from 9% in 2011 to 14% in 2019. Interestingly, the use of mature-age entry provision halved from 6% to 3%, while the use of professional qualification to access university remained stagnant at around half a percent.

Alternative pathways were important to under-represented groups trying to access university. In fact, over half of all under-represented groups accessed university via alternative pathways. More than three-quarters of Indigenous students and nine out of ten mature-age students came through alternative routes. The use of alternative pathways by under-represented groups rose between 2011 and 2019. For example, for students of low SES backgrounds, this rose from 56% in 2011 to 62% in 2019, and for regional and remote students, this rose from 60% to 52% over the same period. We did find that Indigenous students’ use of alternative entry pathways fell from 79% to 75%, perhaps reflecting improvements in school achievement over the ten years. Alternative entry still remains, however, the most popular way for Indigenous students to enter university.

Student outcomes by university entry pathway

When we compared the academic performance of students from the various alternatives pathways to students coming directly from secondary education, we found some interesting results. Generally, students from alternative pathways had poorer academic outcomes. They were less likely to stay on after their full first-year of university study, or complete their course than those entering directly from secondary education. Students that performed the worst came through the VET and mature-age entry pathways, being the least likely to complete their course  compared to students from secondary education. Interestingly, students from pathway providers or enabling programs actually had stronger rates of retention and completion than secondary school entrants.

We also looked at the marks that students from different pathways achieved, in their first year and over their whole course. We found similar results to retention and course completion: those entering from VET and mature-age entry provisions achieved poorer academic results over their course, although less so in their first year.

What does this all mean?

Our study highlighted how entry pathway can make a difference to how well students do at university, both in terms of the marks they achieve, and whether they complete their course. Some alternative entry pathways – namely enabling programs and pathway providers – did well compared to the traditional way of entering university, via secondary education. Others, notably VET qualification and mature-age entry provision (including STAT), didn’t fare well against secondary education entry. Given alternative entry pathways are on the rise, and this growth is unlikely to slow given the ongoing push for widening participation, higher education institutions need to think seriously about how to better support students coming in through these diverse routes. Furthermore, students from under-represented groups (or ‘equity’ groups) are highly represented in alternative entry pathways, further bolstering the need for support.

Additional academic support may help alternative entrants to achieve better marks, particularly mature-age students and those coming from VET, both perhaps building practical experience and lacking exposure to academic skill development. Strategies to increase alternative entrants’ sense of belonging in higher education may assist with retention, and clearly this needs to extend beyond the first year of study. Given their positive results, strategies to expand enabling programs and upscale entry through extending current and building new pathway partnerships appear sensible strategies to widen participation.   

Ian Li is an economist based at the School of Population and Global Health, The University of Western Australia. He is interested in applied fields of health and labour economics, particularly on research on the determinants of well-being, economic evaluation of healthcare, graduate outcomes and higher education policy equity. Ian is a member of the UWA Academic Board, the Equity and Participation Working Group, and director of the Public Health undergraduate major. He is an editorial board member of the Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management and a co-editor of the Australian Journal of Labour Economics.

Denise Jackson is the director of Work-Integrated Learning (WIL) in the ECU School of Business and Law and researches student employability and career prospects through embedding meaningful work-based learning and industry and community engagement into the curriculum, as well as providing access to a range of employability-related activities. She sits on the National Board for the Australian Collaborative Education Network, the professional association for WIL in Australia, and maintains close links with industry through research projects, the WIL program and networking. She is also a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

ATAR is a university marketing tool: 4 reasons to stop obsessing about it

The recent ‘revelation’ that Australian universities are not sticking to their advertised course cut-offs has caused a ruckus. Some even see it as a scandal: universities are admitting students with much lower (gasp) than advertised Australian Tertiary Admissions Ranks (ATARs), even into ‘top’ courses.

I think it is time to look at some facts around ATARs. I have four important ones for you. I believe everyone concerned about or discussing ATARs should know these facts.

Fact 1: Most university place offers are not made on the basis of the published ATAR.

Around two-thirds of the university places offered in Australia each year are made to students who do not have an ATAR. Almost 50 per cent of new university students are mature age, international, vocationally qualified or will have come to university through a myriad of alternative entry schemes.

Direct entry to university is growing exponentially at some universities, with the ATAR bypassed altogether. Direct entry, mature-age and international students, and students who come through VET pathways make up the majority of the Australian university cohort.

In my own state, Victoria, most courses that make offers to students through the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre (VTAC) do not publish ATARs for those courses. Yes, that’s right, most courses. Of the minority that do publish an ATAR for a course, two-thirds made more than 30 per cent of their offers to students with lower ATARs than the published figure.

All universities award ATAR bonus points. These extra points and how they are determined are not regulated in any way, nor are they usually transparent. Universities can award bonus points as they wish and for whatever they wish. This furtive awarding of points is disguised as recognising “leadership”, “community-mindedness” and other qualities of applicants.

Fact 2: The ATAR is not a score.

The ATAR is a numerical, relative ranking derived from senior high-school performance and a complex series of scaling and other adjustments. In a relative ranking system, students in one year’s cohort are ranked against each other.

An ATAR of 49 does not mean a student has failed, it means the student is ranked at the 49th percentile of a cohort that year in terms of their academic performance, as measured and scaled according to a complex series of mechanisms. In a cohort of, say, 45000 students in one year, a student with an ATAR of 49 has an academic performance equal to or better than 22000 students that same year. Hardly a failure.

And similarly, no matter how bright they are, nor how hard they or their teachers work, no more than ten per cent of students’ ATAR rankings will be in the top ten per cent of rankings. That’s how ranking works.

Fact 3: The ATAR is linked to socioeconomic status.

The evidence indicates that ATAR scores are correlated with socioeconomic status and social capital. To put it simply, the higher the socioeconomic status and capital of the student, the higher the ATAR is likely to be, and vice versa.

For example, poor people in rural areas generally have lower ATARs than rich people from metropolitan areas. But poor people are not stupid and do not compromise educational standards or outcomes. They just have less of the social and cultural capital that counts for school education outcomes (and, therefore, ATARs). No mater how tempting it is to think it: an ATAR rank is not a measure of intelligence, motivation, diligence, aptitude or ability.

Fact 4: The ATAR is now used primarily as a marketing tool to an under informed public

The ATAR was more important when the supply of university places was limited and demand for these exceeded supply. Cut-offs were a useful strategy for allocating too few places. However, in our current demand-driven system of university places, where there are few limits on the number of students a university can enrol, the ATAR is used primarily as a marketing tool. Universities rely on folk believing that the higher the ATAR, the better the quality of the course and possibly, the better the university. But what is it better at?

Many assume, understandably but incorrectly, that the higher the ATAR needed to get into a course of study, the “better” the quality of the course. But the ATAR has no correlation with objective measures of course quality. The simple truth is that the higher the ATAR for a course, the more popular the course is among school leavers.

The public are currently being misled by what is essentially a clever marketing system using ATARs as proxies of quality of courses and institutions. It needs to stop and Peter Shergold, the head of the federal Higher Education Standards Panel, has recently announced that the Panel will begin to increase transparency around this issue.

It is time to stop obsessing about entry standards and start focusing on exit standards

What we should be focused on as a society is what happens to students, regardless of their entry method, during their university study and after graduation. Many students who have very high ATARs come unstuck at university when the intensive support and guidance, to which they had become accustomed, falls away.

As Tim Pitman from the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education has recently emphasised, the point of university education is not to validate entry standards but to educate, value-add and ensure high quality outcome standards. We all know that elements of effective university education and high quality learning outcomes go far beyond the supposed standard at which the students enter the university. Teaching quality, the curriculum, learning support and student support are just some of the most obvious.

All universities must put in place proactive support structures, processes and programs to ensure all the students to whom they give access can meet their potential and have the highest chance of success possible.

I often ask: When a university graduate seeks employment, how many sensible employers will ask them to reveal their ATAR from all those years ago? On the other hand, how many will be interested in what the graduate knows, can do, and can contribute?

The main priority should be to focus on exit standards and outcomes, where students end up, not where they started. If we restrict access to university only to those guaranteed to succeed based on previous education scores, we block a life-changing opportunity for scores of thousands of people every year.

It’s important to keep educating a wide range of students

University education is now open to more students than in the past when it was just available to white, upper-class men. This is good for students, their futures, their families, the economy and society. Successive governments of both sides have encouraged and supported increased access to university education for a larger number and broader range of people. The alternative is to have fewer people educated at the highest levels and subsequent reduced capacity to lead and innovate in a rapidly changing world.

Case studies at my own universities show that despite starting with very low ATARs, those who go on to successfully complete courses will graduate as qualified professionals and subsequently contribute to the economy, their communities and society in enhanced ways.

What matters most about university education is the quality of the education offered and the capacity and knowledge of graduates and whether they can do what governments and society expect of them, having had the privilege of access to education at that level.

If the purpose of university education is to contribute to an educated society, that treats its members and members of other societies with dignity, respect and kindness, while simultaneously advancing economic, environmental and other fronts, then we should unburden ourselves of outdated and inaccurate notions about the power of a single number.

I believe we need to focus more closely on how to facilitate success for the many, rather than the few.

 

Devlin

 

Professor Marcia Devlin is a Professor of Learning Enhancement and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Learning and Quality) at Federation University Australia.  @MarciaDevlin