All black and coloured students who apply to study medicine at the University of Cape Town are considered to be "educationally disadvantaged" even if they attended private schools, documents before the Cape High Court have revealed.
By contrast, Indian students are divided into categories according to whether they attended private or government schools and are regarded as not having received a disadvantaged education under apartheid.
This, according to the Durban-based doctor parents of an Indian student who was not accepted to study medicine, showed that the university's medical school admission policy was "unreasonable and irrational".
The girl's parents claim that a list of UCT's current intake of first-year medical students reveals that not one of the successful black or coloured applicants admitted to the university were required to provide personal reports, which detail students' non-academic achievements and are required from all white and Indian students.
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| But reinstated it when that girl's parents threatened legal action |
UCT Registrar Hugh Amoore earlier stated that applicants from "educationally disadvantaged backgrounds" - who would not have had the opportunities for leadership, volunteer services/work and extra-curricular activities - would not be required to produce personal reports and would be individually assessed.
Many black school-leavers were not given personal-report scores because their schools failed to supply the reports, UCT contended. Amoore also stated that government provided additional funding to public higher education institutions "with large proportions of disadvantaged students".
The list of this year's successful medical school applicants showed that black and coloured pupils who had matriculated from Herschel Girls' High School, Clarendon High School, Westerford High School and Gauteng school Roedean - all prestigious high schools - had not been required to submit a personal report. This was "inconsistent", the student's father contended in papers filed in preparation for the legal battle with UCT.
The student, known only as Sunira, was one of over 2 100 people to apply for 200 positions to study first-year medicine at UCT. Her parents decided to take UCT to court after her friend, Student B, also an Indian girl, was accepted by the university although her marks were not as good.
It emerged in correspondence before the High Court that the university had offered the second girl a place in the belief that she was black.
When it discovered its error, the university withdrew its offer, but reinstated it when that girl's parents threatened legal action.
In an affidavit before the court, Amoore revealed that UCT's "target equity mixes" for first-time-entering medicine undergraduates were set at 42 percent black, 28 percent white, 16 percent coloured and 14 percent Indian. Gender targets required 65 percent of these students to be female and 35 percent male.
- This article was originally published on page 5 of Pretoria News on March 04, 2005
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