Race-based university admission policies: what’s the reality?

Are universities’ race-based admission policies unfair and depleting the quality of medical students and doctors in South Africa?

Fierce debate on this issue was recently sparked when Western Cape health MEC Debbie Schäfer  shared a post on Twitter suggesting a straight-A student was rejected by the University of Cape Town’s medical school due to his race.

This prompted outrage from Afriforum CEO Kallie Kriel and others.

What exactly does it take to be “competitive”????? pic.twitter.com/XLx8lizybY

— Debbie Schafer (@DebbieSchafer) March 13, 2021

What a disgrace! @afriforum is more than willing to assist in fighting this should our assistance be required. pic.twitter.com/90LUVZrdrC

— Kallie Kriel (@kalliekriel) March 13, 2021

UCT, which supposedly rejected the student, issued a statement debunking the claim. It turned out the student had in fact been accepted, but decided not to accept the university’s invitation in favour of a different career path, but the ensuing argument persisted.

What does it take to get into a South African medical school?

A perception appears to exist these admission policies are the reason top performing white students have to seek opportunities overseas or find it more difficult to gain admission to South Africa’s top medical schools.

The Citizen reached out to a number of the country’s top medical schools to determine what extent race plays a role in their admissions criteria and whether white students are being disadvantaged purely due to race.

All the universities that responded said academic merit was the top qualifying criterion, along with several others. This means that top performing matrics have to also meet other prerequisites, such as participating in extramural activities and coming from underprivileged backgrounds.

University of KwaZulu-Natal:

According to Normah Zondo, acting executive director of corporate relations at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, admission to the MBChB degree at UKZN is accessible by applicants from all racial groups. The university’s policy, however, is committed to redressing the inequalities of the past with regards to accessing healthcare, in line with both the national and provincial transformational agenda.

“To promote social cohesion and broad economic development in rural areas, in line with the National Development plan, selection ensures that sufficient applicants from rural areas in South Africa are admitted. As such, a number of applications are accepted from students that completed their Grade 10-12 studies at a non fee-paying (Quintile 1-3) school,” she said.

The school’s selection is based on merit as well as equity targets on demographics which consists of 69% African, 19% Indian, 9% Coloured, 2% White and 1% Other. Only 215 candidates are selected annually to the school which receives 8,500 to 9,000 applications a year.

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UKZN’s  MBChB degree programme is the only programme at the university where this quota system applies. According to Zondo, the university’s enrolment plan is revised regularly to take into account the need to produce top quality professionals as required by the country.

University of the Witwatersrand:

The University of Witwatersrand (Wits) revised the admission policy for its medical school in 2014 to reserve 60% of admission space to historically underprivileged students and 40% based purely on merit.

According to the policy, the Wits Faculty of Health Sciences carefully selects students through a combination of criteria which include merit, performance on national standardised examinations, race and other competencies.

The school also offers substantial student supportsas well as a system of remediation to avert outright failure in the MBBCh programme. The school receive more than 12,000 applications for 260 spaces in medicine.

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University of the Free State:

The University of Free State’s (UFS) MBChB programme is highly sought after by students across the SADC region, with annual applications exceeding the 5,000 mark for its 180 available spaces, according to spokesperson Lacea Loader.

The university’s quota system for the medicine school targets males and females with minimum representation of 40% for either gender.

Its non-white students make up 70% of the class, with 30% being white.

These quotas, says Loader, take into account the demographic composition of the institution’s target region. Up to five students have to come from Lesotho.

The school accepts 80% of its students straight from high school, while the rest are senior students.

Simnikiweh@citizen.co.za

*A previous version of this article contained an quote erroneously attributed to Afriforum CEO Kallie Kriel.

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