An increasing number of year 12 students across Western Australia are being accepted into university without needing an ATAR, raising concerns about the possible impacts on motivation to study, and in turn, lack of preparedness to succeed at university.

Glenn Savage, Associate Professor at the School of Education at UWA, told Michael Genovese and Mick Colliss, filling in for Millsy and Karl, that there has not been enough research into how these new pathways affect student motivation. 

“I think we are at a point where things have diversified, after Covid when universities had a sudden hit to their enrollment, we saw a lot of new ideas coming through about how young people could get into University,” Professor Savage said.

“The early offer that a lot of students are receiving these days is not a cop out – this sort of idea that they are just going to the beach for 6 months is not really accurate.”

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