Court fight for medical school admission fails

An Eshowe student’s court application to compel the University of KwaZulu-Natal to enrol her as a first-year medical student has failed.

Pietermaritzburg - Eshowe student, Niekara Harrielall, burst into tears on Wednesday and had to be consoled by her family after she lost her fight to be enrolled in medical school.

Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge, Mohini Moodley, said she was not persuaded that Harrielall had proven the university had deviated from its admission policy and failed to consider her application.

Harrielall, 19, brought an urgent application to compel the University of KwaZulu-Natal to enrol her as a first-year medical student.

She claimed she could not get into medical school because the institution was not applying its own admission policy regarding mature students.

The policy states that eligible students must have a Grade 12 certification with outstanding results, exceeding the minimum standards, as well as one or more years of a degree at a recognised institution.

She applied to study medicine in 2014 and was told the minimum requirement for “an Indian”, was to get an aggregate of 90.3% and above in the matric exams.

She passed all seven matric subjects with distinction. Last January, she was told her marks were not good enough.

However, she could apply at the end of the year as a “mature student”. For this, she had to study at a recognised university and achieve “outstanding results”. She enrolled at the Westville campus for a degree in Medical Science (anatomy).

She obtained two Dean’s commendations and between 71% and 86% in her first and second semesters for all subjects.

Arguing on behalf of Harrielall, advocate Adrian Collingwood, said UKZN had not applied the admission policy correctly in terms of their selection process. Collingwood argued the university had “ranked” mature student applicants according to their completion of degrees and not their results.

“One cannot draw a distinction if one applicant completed a degree and another has not. This is not provided for in the policy. A person with a PhD may have had second class results in their first year. Niekara achieved outstanding results and this should have been considered,” he said.

Arguing on behalf of the university, advocate Alistair Dickson, said the selection committee had applied its policy correctly and Harrielall’s application was considered, but she was simply “beaten by other candidates”.

Dickson said UKZN received 161 applications by mature students. Of the 40 spots allocated to mature students, 19% had to be Indian in terms of the racial quota.

This works out to eight spots that would be allocated to Indian mature students.

UKZN admitted nine students who had completed degrees, and Harrielall, according to Dickson, did not make the cut.

He argued Harrielall ranked 16th among the first year mature students in terms of the academic merit list. If Harrielall were to be granted admission to the medical school based on her results, Dickson said this would be unfair to those students who preceded her in the rankings.

In her judgment, Moodley agreed that simply because an applicant met the criteria, it did not mean he or she could be admitted. Harrielall was given reasons by the university’s legal team for their decision to reject her application, yet she continued to demand she be admitted.

“It is an unfortunate reality that a quota system is in place, but this is a necessary evil that exists to address the past atrocities of apartheid, and is reflective of the demographic of South Africa,” Moodley said.

The judge felt that even without a quota system in place there had to be a restriction placed on the number of applicants. She was unable to find any irregularities with the university’s ranking system based on academic merit, and found that it was in accordance with the university’s admission policy.

Collingwood said Harrielall would appeal the decision.

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