News | by Michael Packer
January 24, 2023 | UMCs want a model for post-selection lottery to be legally possible. According to them, this makes admission fairer and puts the right student in the right place. However, both statements are clearly false.
Tonight, the House of Representatives will debate a bill that would make it possible to reintroduce the lottery. After a call from the umbrella organizations UNL and NFU, the VVD and CDA will do so Submit an edit That the Klaas Visser model (a combination of lottery and selection) should make this legally possible.
In the Classface model All candidates who go through the selection procedure are ranked. The highest rank is admitted anyway, the lowest rank is disqualified anyway, and the broad middle group is subject to a lottery.
The revocation argument is used to resubmit
According to the umbrella organizations, the combination of draft and selection will result in fairer admissions. “This way, the right student ends up in the right place,” says NFU President Bertine Lahes.
At least this statement is curious. Before the lottery was canceled in the 2017-2018 school year, then-Minister Jet Bussemaker used the same argument. “I see the space of decentralized choice that we are creating with the abolition of the lottery as an important argument for directing the student to the right place,” Bussemaker said in 2015.
This argument can also be found under “Arguments for Abolishing the Lottery” in an old letter on the UNL website. “Selection leads to a better match between the requirements of the program and the student rather than drawing lots, because selection can be made based on several factors,” I mentioned the dome at that time. In addition, selection without a lottery would contribute to “a better connection of the student to the program of study, a more ambitious study culture, fewer dropouts, and a higher study success rate.”
What is an “appropriate student”?
Not only is the use of the “right student in the right place” argument confusing, but the meaning is completely unclear. What is the right student? In medical education, this is definitely not one type of student, explains Nilofar Ashtiani. She is a pediatrician with an educational background.
“The perfect doctor or student does not exist. We deal with different patients with different backgrounds and characteristics, and the number of doctors should be a reflection of society,” Ashtiani said. “There is no one perfect group to choose from; the strength lies in the variety of students.”
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Selection committees must therefore have a diverse lineup, because such committees will not readily appreciate qualities they themselves do not possess, Ashtiani realizes. “The selection procedure should be set up in such a way as to value what the different candidates can bring and the qualities they will bring with them in their practice as a physician. That will produce the ideal combination.”
The combination of lottery and selection does not lead to fairer admissions
However, it is known that Select medical programs from an unrepresented group. Students with immigrant backgrounds, poor parents, or parents who do not work in health care Participate less often in the selection for medical training. Thus returning to the (partial) lottery only will neither increase student diversity nor move the “right students” to the “right place”.
Moreover revealed by searching That selection tools such as resume assessments and interviews, where assessment falls entirely on the selection committee, lead to more unequal opportunities than, for example, selection based on pre-university education numbers. These are exactly the tools that the programs of study themselves are allowed to design – the “tailor-made approach to each program of study”, which university organizations advocate.
we siding Working within a scientifically unproven system. Why should we go on with this at all?
In a recent report on selection, the Education Inspectorate wrote that study programs are chosen primarily with the aim of examining success – not with the intention of assembling a student group that is as diverse or representative as possible.
Thus, reintroducing the lottery and the combination of selection (Klaas Visser’s model) does not necessarily lead to fairer admissions, as the umbrella organizations claim. After all, the choice remains. With this, ranking is done on the basis of acceptance, rejection or subjection of the lottery to the candidate. If this ranking was made on the basis of biased selection, nothing would change about the current scientifically proven inequality of opportunity.
Why ride With this selection system?
The current selection procedure is not at all Evidence-basedAshtiani sums it up. “We know enough to say, ‘We are siding Working within a scientifically unproven system. Why should we go on with this at all? ”
The Education Inspectorate also recently stated that there is no consensus among programs “about what constitutes ‘good’, scientifically validated selection criteria and tools.”
When it comes to medical training, it’s not just the inequality of opportunity surrounding selection procedures that is problematic. “This directly harms healthcare,” Ashtiani asserts. “This is my biggest objection as a doctor. It means suboptimal health care. You can already see this in maternity care. Just look at the Dutch figures on the differences between ethnic groups. They are shocking.”
