Dear University of Otago,

Please can you tell me the number of applications to enrol in MBChB (all categories) recieved from domestic students who have attained the age of 20 years.

For each year for the past 5 years (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020). In other words, how many applications were made that were not requesting 'special consideration' from the council.

Please can you tell me how many (what number for each of those years) of those students were offered places in the MBChB (whether they accepted or rejected their offers). And also how many of those students for each year were not offered places / were told they were not eligible or entitled to apply.

Yours faithfully,

K Roe

Dear University of Otago Registrar,

Thankyou for taking the time to try and answer my questions.

The answers help me clarify further questions.

The real question (I see how) is how many students are chosen to do Medicine in a manner that is not within the spirit of the Education Act.

1) The Education Act makes it pretty clear that Tertiary Education is (in the first instance) for adults -- people who have attained the age of 20 years. These students are ENTITLED to be enrolled in the program of their choosing.

This is to say the University is not entitled to go around saying 'we declare this, that, and the other student 'ineligible' by putting in arbitrary criterion of the form that if you aren't married to a doctor we won't consider your application or we will only consider your application within a 2 month timeframe window where we will refuse to supply you an application form, or we will only consider 1 application from you'.

I don't see how declaring students 'ineligible' on the basis of such arbitrary criterion is at all in keeping with the Education Act. Would the University like to comment on 'reasons for declaring students ineligible'? Or is it a case of 'we decide who will progress and if we don't choose you then you thereby make insufficient academic progress to be progressed!'. Which is clearly nonsense. It is not clever. And it most certainly isn't any good.

2) The Education Act allows for the University to select students on the basis of underrepresented group status in the case where there is required to be limitation on entry.

Peter Crampton recently said that Maori students WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO CATCH UP IN THEIR LIFETIME. I don't know if that was a promise, or a threat. I don't know how many Maori students are allowed to attain the age of 20 years before being selected in vs how many are chosen so early so as to effectively prevent that. The Education Act seems pretty clear to me that the only reason for selecting students under the age of 20 is to increase representation in under-represented groups. I suppose I think that the Univesrity lists all the under-represented groups they acknowledge? That is to say Rural Origins (because Waiheke Island doesn't have enough doctors and they feel the need to support private rural boarding schools), Maori and Pacific etc.

3) What I am getting at... How many students are selected who are have not attained the age of 20 years and who also are not members of a University acknowledged equity group? By 'University acknowledged equity group?' I mean to say the categories that are listed by the University. I am concerned that the University thinks it is clever, for example, by considering 'children of doctors and senior officials' to be members of an equity group (they are in the 'elite minority' hahaha) -- but this is clearly not in keeping with the purpose of the Education Act. It would be corruption. Using public office for private advantage.

-- How many people who have not attained the age of 20 years are not correctly recorded as in fact being members of an equity group (listed by the University) -- get offered a place in MBChB at Otago?

HOw does the University think that this practice is justified?

See... Once the places are given to the 'chosen few' (and some others so as to make them look not as bad as they would otherwise)... How many places are left??

I don't understand how the 'Alternative' criterion is at all in keeping with the Education Act. Healthcare professionals is not a relevant miniority group. The University is clear that grades and educational attainment are irrelevant for memebers of this group (the Univesrity will choose people who have never studied at university if they choose them). The problem, here, is of course, arbitrary choosing.

The Univesrity of Otago is not a private school. It is a public school. You simply don't get to 'choose' (which applications to progress) etc.

Yours sincerely,

K Roe

Dear University of Otago Registrar,

Thankyou for answering my question. If I could please have, just one follow up:

How many students who have not attained the age of 20 years...
Are offered a place in MBChB...
When they are also not members of a TAS?

In other words, how many people are 'chosen' for places despite the Education Act guiding Universities to enrol adults in the first instance, and members of under-represented groups in the second?

Yours sincerely,

K Roe

Dear University of Otago Registrar,

It was fairly recently that... Was it 1/3rd of final year University of Otago Medical Students were in trouble for bribing foreign officials to get out of their work-experience / internship requirement. We are supposed to believe that it isn't that they are irrevokably morally corrupt -- it is that they are children. Children with a sense of entitlement, apparently. Barry Taylor stood up and told the media that there was absolutely nothing wrong with bribing officials to get out of work-experience / internship requirement and in fact that is what he did back when he was an entitled child, as well.

Somebody should sue the Univesrity of Otago for (it appears to be) a very deliberate and intentional effort to completely and entirely undermine the credibility of the University of Otago MBChB Degree program.

How can anybody in New Zealand respect it? How can anybody overseas respect it? How can reputable Universities overseas allow their students to come into this country and do internships when we make it clear as clear as clear can be that bribing officials is how we do things in New Zealand. To the point where people like Barry Taylor can say 'that's what I did when I came through this University there's nothing wrong with that at all' with a straight face. To the camera. On the record.

We are talking about PUBLIC universities. We are talking about a PUBLIC health system that they are trained in and that they are supposedly trained to work in.

We honestly think it is okay for these entitlted children to... What is it that Medical Doctors do -- exactly? Decide who gets treatment vs who they say will be terminal? Decide who gets on waitlist vs who they say will be terminal? Decide who gets to live and who gets to die? Decide who they will help and who they will not help? Decide who they choose to practice on and to what they turn a blind eye.

The entitled children of senior officials. And a smattering of students who bribed the Medical Admissions Committee for their places? A few to make the children of the senior officials look like glowing upstanding citizens?

How can we present ourselves to the world with a straight face?

I simply don't understand.

Process the applications.
ALL the applications.
Noooooooooooooo. Process them properly.

If you can't / won't do it -- then I hear it's easy enough to apply for welfare these days.
Step aside and let someone with the actual capacity to do it do it (for a change).

Yours sincerely,

K Roe