Financial incentives are encouraging Australian universities to admit more and more high school graduates that receive low Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks (ATAR) or use alternative admission schemes, resulting in a soaring number of dropouts, a new report found.
While there are calls to scrap ATAR entirely, the Centre of Independent Studies argues that greater, not less, the focus should be placed on ATAR-based university admissions.
Rob Joseph, a data scientist specialising in education, found that higher-ranked ATAR students achieve the highest tertiary completion rates (finishing their degree on time).
“Non-ATAR based admissions are almost twice as likely as ATAR-based admissions to drop out of university in their first year,” he said….