紙反映普評意見: Proposed Hall Admission System for 2008: why we shouldn’t agree with it

Background

The Task force on Hall Admission Quotas of the Committee of Halls has published a Proposed Hall Admission System for the Future. We found some ideas in it interesting and is in the right way forward, but its drawbacks has made us make this position to oppose the adoption of this system.

Information on the system

In this system, first year non-local students and first year local students with an onerous need would be guaranteed a hall place for a year, while everyone else will be subjected to a 50:50 split in point calculation.: the former being the need factor, and the latter being the contribution or the discretionary factor which is decided on a hall-by-hall basis. Re-admission is done out of this system by each hall deciding individually on the number of students they are going to retain, from 75% to 90%. The system also includes check and balance systems, like requiring a tutor to attend all hall interviews and all appeals should have their reasons stated if they are not successful.

What and why we are dissatisfied with it

At the first glance, it seems that it is the way forward because it grants autonomy to the halls while it also guarantees the halls to consider the need factor for everyone. However, the greatest concern is the amount of autonomy granted to the halls is too much. In the proposed system, if the number of places for non-absolute need students is known, say x, then the hall can completely control the result by assigning the discretionary factor of x students be 100 and all the others be zero. In this way, the wanted students (that is with the second part being 100) would have a total mark of at least 50, and the others with a mark of at most 50. Assuming that the mark for the need factor is practically non-zero, the first x students will the x students assigned by the hall. Thus the result can be fully in control of the hall.

Some will say that with the publicizing of the criteria and their ratios, the risk of result-fixing should be eliminated. These people has missed the point that the report has no mention of any external reviewing or even information on how the factors should be distributed statistically. The report suggests that every hall can set their own score that “takes into consideration of non-academic achievements, expected contribution to hall life, match with the style of the hall, and performance interview” We are deeply concerned on how does those factors literally means, especially when “contribution to hall life, match with the style of the hall, performance interview” can be highly subjective and can be taken by each hall to mean very different beings. This again opens up deep concern on how the halls would use their excessive freedom to manipulate the results.

In the forum, Dr. Robert Chung accused us as holding a major “distrust” with the hall community. While we understand that the distrust may be irrational and the halls should be trusted, what we now see is not generally the case. There has been reports widely circulating around the internet that the wardens are generally operating in unison with the admission-deciding body in appeals, and some wardens are over-zealous in their reactions when the philosophy that their students upheld is being questioned by outsiders. Without outside scrutiny to ensure everyone is working well for their jobs, I would see no improvement on the current situation for the time being.

There is also concerns form the hall community that the discretionary factor is being stripped away if they decided to follow the rules. This generally reflects to people who have outstanding achievements but lives affluently near the hall. While the philosophy of educating over-achievers instead of non-achievers should be questioned, it makes no sense for a fair system to allow for so little flexibility if they decided to play fair.

So the situation is pretty clear. If the halls want to play fair, then there will be a fair amount of people who deserves hall education being excluded from the lot. If they decided to trick the system, then ultimately the students will suffer. We would like to make ourselves clear that we are opposing the system on these grounds.

There is also a problem on the re-admission system. HKU is one of the few universities that handles it in May/June, in another lot of the Fresh intakes. It should also be noticed that the current system of re-admission is not centralized, but rather on a hall-by-hall basis. This is currently out of the norm of other universities that handles re-admission identically to new admissions. While it protects the current students and arguably preserves the Hall Culture, it is out of the principle of fairness and practically makes hall residence a 3-year-affair. We would like to change this situation too.

The suggestion

1. All factors should be entered in terms of percentiles instead of the actual values. This is to discourage any pre-calculations made by the halls before the interview and normalize the values so that they should not be biased to any side.

It is assumed that the need factor is calculated similar to what it is now. It is foreseeable that there will be a systematic bias towards the higher end of the scale. Normalizing the scale seems natural especially it is compared against other variables that will surely have a different distribution.

2. The discretionary factor should be further divided in a 1:1 ratio into the “record” factor and “performance” factor.

3. The record factor should include factors that could be determined solely by documents alone like participation in teams in secondary school, and should be pre-calculated before any interviewed is carried out. Such factor should be generally reproducible: that is, anyone should be able to compute these factors independently beforehand. The record factor should be submitted by the warden with prior approval of the Students’ Association to the Committee of Halls and / or the HKUSU Council, which approval should be sought from.

This measure could ensure accountability of the Halls to be in line of the general well-being of the University community.

4. The performance factor should be decided solely by the halls in the interview. It should be free for the halls consider anything they deem fit in this factor and they are free to choose to or not to publicize them.

Forcing the halls to publicize a factor which its calculation cannot be objectively done is of little meaning. Room should also be made for them to adjust the factors on the fly or as they deem fit.

5. Halls should be able to assign 3-5% of their places each year not in accordance to any list or prior guidelines, i.e. they are free to choose who they can place in the places.

This should address some of the concerns of the hall community and should be able to cover those extraordinary cases.

6. There should be no separate re-admission exercise and all applicants should be considered by calculating the factors in the first round admissions.

This means all applicants for a hall place for currents, no matter they are current residents or not, should be considered on the same grounds. There will be no meaning to the re-admission rate since everyone can only be weighed by the marks calculated from the factors.