High student intake prompts cut
JENNY LONG
Problems with a high student intake have led one University of Canterbury department to fail some students only four weeks into their year-long course. More than 500 students had enrolled in a first-year mathematics paper, Math 105. The students were tested last week, and those failed were given a test yesterday as a second chance to stay in the course. The head of the mathematics department, Professor Roy Kerr, said about 40 students were expected to fail after the two tests. He said that once the class was reduced to about 450 students, the department would be able to run satisfactory tutorials for the remaining students. For students to remain on the course, they
had to obtain only 40 per cent in the first test, or 30 per cent in the second, Professor Kerr said. He agreed that it would be hard on students who failed the course at this time, particularly for those who needed the course as a prerequisite for other subjects. However, he said students with the ability to carry on should in fact have passed the first test. The department would apply to the university council for limited entry for next year, under which a quota would be set for the student numbers for the course, Professor Kerr said. “However, limited entry is in many ways a far cruder way of sorting students, because you are turning them down on the basis of bursary results, and not giving them a chance at the course work.”
The department did not have the facilities or the staffing to provide adequately for all the students who were applying, Professor Kerr said. Some tutorials now catered for more than 20 students, when they were trying to limit numbers to 13 or 14. The staff to student ratio in the department was one to 25, when the university average was one to 14, Professor Kerr said. “However, last year, under the same conditions, we had 25 per cent more students pass the maths paper than we have had in the past. “You could say it was over to the students —- they had to work. If they had a problem, they had to solve it,” he said.
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Press, 30 March 1989, Page 7
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372High student intake prompts cut Press, 30 March 1989, Page 7
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