Still no poor doctors
The Post reports:
Students studying health courses at Otago University remain largely from wealthy backgrounds despite successful efforts to boost numbers of Māori and Pasifika.
A study by University of Otago researchers has found that between 1994 and 2023 there was “a notable increase” in the proportion of health programme students at the university who were Māori or Pacific or from rural communities.
However, the socio-economic profile of incoming health students remained “highly skewed towards those from more socio-economically privileged backgrounds”. …
“Students from schools in the lowest socio-economic quintile were nearly absent from health professional programme admissions, comprising approximately 2% of students entering those programmes across time,” wrote the authors in the study, released in November.
So these preferential entry scheme are great for getting wealthy students from the right demographics into health courses, but they fail miserably at getting students from poor families into health courses.
Here’s a radical idea. Don’t have preferential entry based on race, but instead on poverty!
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