by MERLIN CROSSLEY

Have you noticed all the talk about early offers and ATARs?

It’s all part of a huge transition. Last century Australia started moving from an age when universities were only available to the elite (the wealthy and a few scholarship winners) towards offering tertiary education to all. Universities started expanding. But what happens next?

At some stage the supply of education will begin to outstrip demand. Perhaps it already does.

Few people would voice these words because not everyone can afford and access the education they want (I’ll return to this), but you can see hints that supply is outstripping demand in the amount of marketing that is occurring. Student recruitment teams are resorting to early offers in an attempt to sign up students ahead of competitors.

There are a lot of opportunities for students if they are in the big cities, can afford to study, and are aware of what’s available. There are new university places for under-represented groups and there has been a significant uplift in TAFE places (with many courses now free of charge). There are also private providers popping up who offer education in institutions that do not conduct research. These institutions cannot use the name “university” but they can be called colleges. They do not receive government support but have lower costs – because they don’t pay for research infrastructure or salaries of researchers – so they can either charge lower fees or they can charge the same fees and invest more in the student experience.

Finally, there are many job vacancies around and unfortunately the rise in living costs due to inflation will put education out of reach of some students, thereby lessening demand.

So, if I’m right and the supply of education is outstripping demand, does that mean that we can finally do away with ATAR ranking and stress?

No. The reason is simple. Everyone can aspire to tertiary education but not everyone can do medicine. Medicine costs a lot to teach, and the government limits the places to match the demand for medical practitioners as best it can. So, there will continue to be fierce competition to get into medicine. Already it’s moved past “ATAR only” selection to a more sophisticated system but – make no mistake – competitive ranking processes will continue.

Competition will also prevail for entry to law degrees offered by top universities, veterinary science, dentistry, other health professions, as well as architecture, engineering, commerce, Philosophy Politics Economics (PPE), advanced science etc. Students will always strive to get into high demand programs and into sought after institutions.

There are thousands of early offers out there but the ATAR and more sophisticated applicant ranking systems that aim to consider a student’s context and achievement relative to opportunity will always be with us.

There are several downsides to early offers. I think they could impact year 12 teachers and the classroom experience. The sheer abundance of offers can confuse students. They also create a lot of churn, waste, and expense as offers are made, accepted, and ultimately abandoned when HSC results are released and students, finding they have been ranked higher than they expected, go on to accept offers that suit them better.

But the early offer craze is not all bad.

Pupils who feel under stress can relax a little, confident that there will be a place available somewhere, even if it wasn’t their dream course. If they love it anyway, and excel, they will graduate and may go on to follow their original dreams by pursuing graduate degrees in medicine or law etc (albeit with an income contingent loan), or they may transfer before graduating. If they don’t enjoy it, and disengage, then they can seek paths out of university into more suitable educational opportunities or into the workforce.

At the same time high school students who are excelling already will continue to compete and if they are ranked highly they can go straight into high demand programmes.

Those students who perform poorly due to temporary or enduring disadvantage will still have options, provided we alert them to opportunities, and give them the support they need to succeed, including financial support – as affordability remains a big hurdle for many. A lot of people are working on this and hopefully more students who have experienced disadvantage will realise they are welcome and will progress to the tertiary sector.

The early offers, as well as being a form of marketing, are also a response to high school mental health, the perceived unfairness of exams, of economic and other disadvantages being systematically reflected in lower ATARs and a demonstration that universities are not just for the elite. The offers help raise awareness about educational opportunities.

But don’t assume we’ll solve all the world’s problems. Gradually societal divisions in prestige and privilege will reassert themselves. On the plus side there are now more pathways to success, but at the same time there will still be ladders and implicitly snakes as status and achievement work their dark magic.

Overall, I hope we can slowly diversify the tertiary and lifelong learning sectors so that rather than young people all battling it out to get high ATARs in Year 12 to study medicine etc, they can seek different paths suited to their strengths and feel included in society because they have seen – from birth perhaps – that different attractive pathways are open to all, and at many life stages.

Professor Merlin Crossley is DVC Academic Quality at UNSW