Wits proposes new med school admission policy

Wits University is considering restructuring its admissions policies for its medical school to strike a balance between accepting students on merit and addressing "structural inequality".

Wits vice-chancellor Professor Adam Habib this week proposed a new quota system that would ensure that disadvantaged students were selected for medical school regardless of race.

Said Habib: "The new draft policy was a way to make sure that the best students were selected from an unequal world.

"An achiever from St John's [a top private school] will look different to one from a very poor school."

A team is investigating the proposed system.

Wits received 8000 applications for medical school places this year. Only 230 were accepted.

"In the past five months I have been screamed at many times and have been threatened with legal action from parents [whose child] was denied entry."

Habib said he knew of a case in which a student had tried to change his racial classification to coloured at the Department of Home Affairs to improve his chances of acceptance into a medical degree course.

Currently, Wits accepts the top 35% black and coloured students and the 35% top white and Indian students.

The proposed system would mean 50% of medical students admitted were from the top academic achievers, up from 25% currently.

Then the top 10% of students from the poorest schools, 20% from rural areas and 10% blacks and coloureds would gain entry.

The remaining 10% would be drawn in a lottery, a system used in Sweden and the Netherlands that produced good-quality doctors, according to Habib.

On Monday night, Habib asked: "Why should billionaire Patrice Motsepe's child take precedence over a poor white child?"

Frans Cronje, CEO of the SA Institute of Race Relations, agreed with Habib's proposal.

"This is a progressive move and we support Habib. Black does not equal disadvantaged."

The University of Cape Town also has teams investigating admission polices for all UCT degrees to ensure that it takes students who have a disadvantaged background without relying solely on race.

UCT vice-chancellor Professor Max Price previously said in a letter to students: "The use of self-declared race was seen as increasingly problematic. There were white students who are disadvantaged but do not benefit from the current policy."

Habib said rural students had to be represented in medical degrees because they were more likely to return to rural areas to work.

There is a severe shortage of doctors in rural areas, with NGO Africa Health Placements estimating that only 35 of 1200 medical students who graduate each year work in rural areas.

The SA Medical Association trade union's spokesman, Phophi Ramathuba, said the proposed policy made sense.

"Wits has done well to deal with issues of racial division but it needs to bridge inequality and get poor children becoming doctors."