UCT deserves praise for tackling wrongs of past

MR J BUCHANAN and Mr AJ Wienburg, who blame UCT for practising discrimination in their admissions policy, are misguided. Both writers do not accept that the environment is a key factor in impeding the academic performance of the majority of black learners in the country.

Although we are 17 years into our new democracy, with blacks and whites enjoying equal rights, not much has changed for the majority of blacks in SA. Wienburg is fully aware of Cape Town’s inability to maintain existing infrastructure, let alone extending basic services to black townships and informal settlements.

Wienburg’s letter to Fifa in 2007 highlighted the city’s backlog of millions of rands for sewerage works and stormwater systems, and the underfunding of public health, police and ambulance services. Wienburg knows that the environment has not changed for a large majority of learners. The facts cited refer to a fairly modern city. Blacks in rural SA are worse off. Seventeen years of democratic rule cannot undo the damage inflicted for 46 years by the apartheid government, who spent most of its resources on six percent of the population and forced blacks into homelands totalling a mere 13 percent of the total area of the country. The situation is presently exacerbated by high levels of corruption in our present government.

Black matriculants such as Ashraf Moolla from Rondebosch Boys’ High School, the top matriculant in the country in 2011 with an average of 97 percent, is an exception rather than the rule. Most black learners are still taught at under-resourced schools by the same ill-prepared educators of the apartheid era, and have still not reaped the benefits ushered in by the internet and technology.

The majority of white learners benefit from well-resourced schools where internet access is readily available. Wienburg and Buchanan mistakenly assume that the playing field has been levelled.

Let us restrict the comparison to the top matriculants at the best- resourced public schools, formerly known as model C schools. As expected, the largest number of top matriculants are produced by these schools, compared to those produced by other public schools. In 2011, whites comprised nine percent of the total population in SA, while about half-amillion learners wrote matric.

Assuming (a) that 9 percent of all matriculants were white (b) that 60 percent of learners at the bestresourced public schools were white and (c) that 20 percent of the white learners and 20 percent of the black learners were top matriculants at these schools, then 9 000 white and 6 000 black top matriculants were produced by these top schools in 2011.

The ratio of black to white top performing matriculants is not affected by the actual percentage, ie 20 percent. The ratio of black to white top applicants selected from this pool for admission to UCT will be approximately 2 to 3 percent. In the absence of differential entrance requirements, UCT will be forced to enrol more white than black first-year students.

An admissions system with identical selection criteria for all races will discriminate unfairly against blacks and will perpetuate in UCT producing more white than black graduates. Introducing quotas into such an admission system may limit selection to top-performing blacks from top public schools, while denying access to many deserving black matriculants who have the potential to excel academically, but who underperformed for reasons out of their control. These matriculants would have performed better were they afforded an opportunity at a top public school. These promising black matriculants would never have been granted a place in a programme at UCT if the admissions requirements had not been relaxed.

UCT cannot be blamed for the underpreparedness of the majority of black students who are eager to be subjected to UCT’S rigorous academic programmes. All students in a specific programme write the same examinations, which require underprepared black students to work much harder than their white counterparts to succeed.

There is no dumbing down of standards at UCT to increase its pass rates, as confirmed by the Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, which ranked UCT 156 in 2011. UCT is the only university in Africa in the top 200.

Instead of playing the blame game, Wienburg and Buchanan should channel their energies constructively by proposing an improved admissions system to UCT, which should be commended for all its efforts.