April 2004
Queen’s
University, the country’s most competitive undergraduate institution,
is
setting up a controversial separate application stream for First
Nations
students.
Less than 1% of
the 8,000 undergraduates at theKingston
university identify themselves as Indian, Inuit or Metis. To boost this
dismal
aboriginal attendance rate, Queen’s will waive the 85% cut-off mark for
10
aboriginal applicants to its undergraduate arts and science degree,
starting
with applications this fall.
The move is
already being criticized by students, particularly minority students
who fear
they will be perceived as having benefited from affirmative action.
“This puts a
cloud over the whole admissions process,” says Kasra
Nejatian, a 21-year-old Iranian-born commerce student, and president of
the
Queen’s Progressive Conservative Club. “It doesn’t matter how noble the
goals
are, it’s racism in its purest form.”
Mr. Nejatian says
there are other ways the university can help aboriginal students get
into
Queen’s, such as offering tutoring to aboriginal high school students
or
sending Queen’s professors to nearby native communities to act as
mentors and
career advisors.
“Admissions
should be based on merit alone,” he says. Most schools already reserve
places for aboriginal applicants to medical, nursing and law programs,
at the
request of governments that hope the measures will encourage graduates
to
return to their communities and provide badly needed services.
The new Queen’s
undergraduate policy, for example, is modelled on the aboriginal
applications
procedure at Queen’s medical school. Aboriginal students who want the
special
consideration will have to ask for it in a letter. They will need
documents
demonstrating their native heritage, as well as support from a band or
community leader.
Some schools are
more specific in their admissions criteria: Dalhousie
Law School gives special con-sideration to Mi’kmaq and black
people born and raised inNova Scotia.
Others, such as
theUniversity of Windsor and
theUniversity of Toronto,
accept a small number of adult students who may not have graduated from
high
school, providing them with a year of intense remedial instruction
before they
pursue a university degree.
The Queen’s
program will target high school graduates who are academically
qualified, but
do not quite have the marks to secure a spot in the regular, highly
competitive
admissions process, says Christine Overall, the associate dean of
Queen’s
faculty of arts and science, and co-chair of the school’s Aboriginal
Council. “The
kind of mark you need to get into Queen’s is different from the kind of
marks
you need to succeed at Queen’s,” says Dr. Overall.
She dismisses
claims the policy will stigmatize aboriginals, as well as other
minority
students. The choice for aboriginal students to identify their race is
voluntary, she says, and many will continue to apply as regular
applicants.
“They are not going to be going around with a sign saying, “I was
admitted
through the alternative process.”
“It’s a
recognition of the special responsibility that we have to aboriginal
people,
given that aboriginal people are the first people of this country,”
says
Dr. Overall.
The use of
alternative admissions processes was recommended in a 2002 report
commissioned
by the Council of Ministers of Education to improve aboriginal
post-secondary
participation rates in Canada, which
have lagged behind the United States and Australia.
By 2001, about 8%
of non-reserve aboriginals aged 25 to 34 had completed university, up
from 5%
in 1996, Statistics Canada says.
The new policy
will bring Queen’s in line with most universities in Western Canada,
where the
re-quirements for aboriginal applicants are considerably lower than the
cut-off
marks for students in the general applicant pool.
The University of British Columbia and theUniversity of Alberta, for
example, admit aboriginal students who graduate high school with an
overall
average of 67%, provided students provide documents proving their
aboriginal
heritage. For other students, UBC requires marks of at least 82% to
enter its
arts program. At U of A, students must have an average of 72%.
Richard Vedan,
director of UBC’s First Nations House of Learning and a professor of
social
work, defends the admissions model, noting that a young aboriginal male
has a
3% chance of completing post-secondary studies, compared with a 70%
chance of
ending up in a correctional institution.
“There is a
direct link between quality of life, quality of health, socio-economic
standing
and your level of education,” says Dr. Vedan. “If more aboriginal
people are afforded an educational opportunity, there will be
improvements in
each of those areas.”
But the more
generous admissions policies have not always had the desired effect, in
part
because not enough aboriginal students are applying. “OurCollege of Engineering would
be delighted to mentor aboriginal students, but they seldom get many
students
who are interested,” says Marnie McNiven, manager of admissions at the University of Saskatchewan.
‘The situation is
similar at theUniversity of Alberta inEdmonton, where
the university would like aboriginals to make up 5% of the
undergraduate student body. So
far, aboriginal
enrolment is about 3%, or 800 students.
Aboriginal
attendance at UBC is also low, at only about 1%, though university
officials
say the real number is probably a bit higher, as self-identification is
voluntary.
So many awards
and
scholarships created for aboriginal students were going unclaimed that
UBC
created a new recruitment tool two years ago: The Musqueam Soccer
tournament
for aboriginal families. Last June, the tournament attracted more than
600
participants.
“It gets
people to come out and see a university campus first hand, and
university
becomes part of their vocabulary,” says Dr. Vedan. “We hope to see
some of those returns over the next decade.”
The aim of the
program is to get children thinking about university at a young age, as
a
motivation to stay in high school. Almost half drop out before
obtaining their
secondary school diploma, according to StatsCan, although the numbers
are
slowly improving.
He says
aboriginal
youth tend to be skeptical about
universities, and fearful they will be assimilated if they live away
from their
families. “There is a good deal of cynicism and suspicion. People
remember
that in the 1920s, if you got an education, it was at the cost of
losing your
culture,” said Dr. Vedan, who designs curriculum materials for
aboriginal
students.
Of all the
provinces,Manitoba seems
to have the most effective approach: For $8.5-million,Manitoba
enrolls 1,284 hand-picked students in a network of “Access” programs
at the province’s three universities and two community colleges. The
program
accepts adults, some of whom did not graduate from high school, and
prepares
them for careers in social work, nursing, business administration,
engineering
and medicine. The students get remedial instruction; they attend school
through
the summer and receive instruction from professors specializing in
adult
education.
“It’s been
tremendously successful,” says Louise Gordon, executive director of the
Manitoba Council on post-secondary education. “Most aboriginal
engineers
in this country are Access grads. Most aboriginal doctors in this
country are
Access grads.”
National Post
February 11, 2004
Help us maintain freedom in teaching, research and scholarship by joining SAFS or making a donation.
