Justification and critique of the quotas for first-time applicants in the Finnish student admission policy

Authors

• Nina Haltia Turun yliopisto
• Ulpukka Isopahkala-Bouret Turun yliopisto
• Marja Peura Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33350/ka.101665

Keywords:

higher education, student admission, equality in education, quotas for the first-timers

Abstract

In this article, we examine the quotas for first-time applicants, i.e., for the applicants pursuing their first study place in Finnish higher education, from the perspective of educational justice and equality. Quotas can be seen as a form of positive discrimination, which aims to improve the relative position of a certain group. Admission quotas have been used in Finnish university admissions only rarely, but this new policy has been applied since 2016, and the majority of new study places are targeted to first-time applicants. In our article, we examine how the moral position of a ‘first-time applicant’ was constructed and justified in policy documents. Our empirical data consists of two government proposals for changing the university law and the official statements by various stakeholders regarding these proposals. Our findings suggest that the justifications for the positive discrimination of the first-timer applicants were widely accepted, but simultaneously, there were critical voices raised about the quotas. ‘First-time applicant’ as a category does not unambiguously represent any group that is in a disadvantaged position, since individual applicants are in different positions due to their various backgrounds. We argue that the first-time applicant quota is a cumbersome tool for promoting social justice in education, because it is incapable of recognizing the institutional and social differences and unequal positions of the applicants within both the categories, the first-timers and non-first-timers.