Uni sticking to online selection

The National National

UNIVERSITY of Technology (Unitech) will continue to participate in the national online selection system, acting vice-chancellor Dr Ora Renagi says.
The national online system was first used last year for the selection of grade 12 school leavers.
Renagi said there were five significant benefits of the online system to Unitech:

  • The university maintained its autonomy in deciding which qualification criteria were to be met by candidates who applied for admission to all its programmes;
  • provided unprecedented levels of transparency, which minimised perceptions of unfairness, favouritism and general corruption;
  • improved the matching of candidates to programmes, which minimised cases where candidates with high GPAs or weighted averages were not selected;
  • the timely and effective technical and other forms of support from the team at the Department of Higher Education Research Science and Technology over the past two years when the system was introduced; and
  • Significant savings on time and expenses associated with the selection of school-leaver candidates.

Renagi said the university had successfully used the system to select over 98 per cent of candidates for its courses.
“The Department of Higher Education Research Science and Technology facilitated the process and supported Unitech in its endeavor to select well-qualified candidates using the criteria, which were approved by the Unitech academic board,” he said.
“The university was able to specify approved input criteria and also cross-check output from the system, against its approved selection criteria, as a second-level of quality assurance before issuing acceptance letters to qualified candidates.”