Clearing

It's clearing time for us here in the UK -- the process whereby people who applied to study at university who didn't meet the required grade have the opportunity to re-apply. At the fabled institution where I am a lecturer we academics spend a few days glued to telephones answering queries, supposedly screened by other trained personnel, but the majority of which could be answered by an automated system:

Press 'C' on your phone for computing courses ... Press '1' for the Computing With Bungee-jumping degree ... The entry requirements are a minimum of two A-levels at grade C or above and GCSE grade C or above in Maths and English. If you meet those requirements, which will be verified through UCAS, and have no outstanding offers from other UK universities please key in your UCAS or UCAS Clearing number followed by the pound/hash button now ... Thank you. You will receive notification of any offer via the UCAS web site within 24 hours. If you have any other queries please press pound/hash now.

The reason that this could so easily be automated is that there aren't that many judgment calls to be made at this time of year and those applicants that need intervention can easily be called back. Why do we do it manually? One thing's for certain: It's not so that abusive parents can accuse us of racism when we reject an applicant because he or she does not meet the minimum requirements (I kid you not! But her school says she's within 2% of a C so why is her D not good enough? You're just being racist in rejecting her... No, we're being selective in rejecting people below the minimum requirements and if you have a problem with selection then please feel free to apply to the University of Bums on Seats. It is you who is prejudiced. Trying to play the "race card" only works for Johnny Cochrane!) No, it's done manually because <cynical>academics are cheaper than IT systems or expensive administrators</cynical> or, possibly, we're old-fashioned enough to think that the personal touch matters when dealing with the future of these applicants ;-)