The introduction of a new standards-based secondary school assessment system, the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), necessitated significant changes to the admissions processes for New Zealand universities, particularly for competitive-entry programmes such as medicine, engineering and pharmacy. Selection to such programmes…

There is disagreement in the literature regarding the influence of social and cultural factors on the propensity for young people to undertake higher education. This study draws upon a national data set of over 45,000 young people to assesses their propensity to progress to bachelor level study, while controlling for their ethnic backgrounds,…