The way universities hand out early entry placements to prospective students could be set for a shake-up, with the federal education minister urging a national approach.
In a speech to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency’s annual conference on Thursday, Jason Clare will call on the team looking at university reform to examine how to deal with early offers.
A panel of experts has been looking at changes to the tertiary education system as part of the university accords, which will be handed to government by the end of the year.
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With universities offering more early placements to school graduates, Clare believes a unified approach is needed.
“Education ministers recently agreed that we wanted the accord team to give us their advice on the issue of early university offers,” Clare will say in the speech.
“At the moment, there are different rules in different parts of the country.”
The large numbers of early offers has led to calls in some states for a delay until at least after a student’s final exams have been held.
In 2022, more than 43,000 early entry offers were made to students in NSW alone.
But Clare said there was a lack of consensus on how the early offers affected students.
“Some teachers say it causes students to take their foot off the pedal. Some universities tell me they are worried about other universities poaching their best and brightest,” he will tell the conference.
“Education ministers told me they want a standard national approach, so expect to see something about that in the final report.”
The accord panel, headed up by former University of Adelaide vice-chancellor Mary O’Kane, has been examining 70 policy ideas on changes to the university sector.
An interim report released earlier this year called for changes to help more students from disadvantaged backgrounds be able to graduate from university.
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