Introductory Phase as Selection Method to Handle Student Access

Since the European Court of Justice decided on 7th of July that the Austrian legislation on University admission is contrary to community law, Austria now has to take measures to ensure that holders of secondary diplomas from all Member States have access to higher and university education under the same conditions as holders of Austrian secondary education diplomas. Thus, the discussion about appropriate selection mechanisms for university students and especially the employment of instruments and procedures used for personnel selection in business organizations to regulate university admission has become a main issue. This debate got an additional key driver as in Germany the selection procedure “numerus clausus” has been reruled, lately. In this paper, the authors first demonstrate the various weaknesses of the main personnel selection instruments. Secondly, they show that the ideal procedure is to implement an introductory phase, in which all variables supposed to influence students ? performance are taken into consideration. One of the conclusions is that it is not a suitable way to control admission in testing abilities and skills of students before they are allowed to begin their studies as it is suggested by some “experts” in the field.

25.02.2007 | Helmut KASPER & Gerhard FURTMÜLLER (Wien)