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The weighted lottery in the admission to ‘restricted’ university studies in the Netherlands

Ben Wilbrink

Leiden, The Netherlands

mission statement

The Dutch weighted lottery for admission to, for example, the studies of medicine and dentistry, is rather famous, and yet largely unknown regarding its important characteristics, its history, or the public debate surrounding it and flaring up every other ten years or so. My intention in this project/webpage is to make that information available in English. There have already been attempts to let the outside world know how the Dutch are trying to solve some pressing problems in admissions, resulting from a shortage in available places—or from a lack of funding, which is rather the same thing—in higher education. Wim Hofstee presented a paper in a 1980 congress in Antwerp, which was published in 1983 html and made available on this website with his permission. Flora Goudappel (1999) [paid pdf] describes the work of the Drenth Committee, in the nineties, and the changes in the law following their report. But that is it, more or less.

Now there is the book by Conall Boyle, of course.

Conall Boyle (2010). Lotteries for education. Origins, Experiences, Lessons. Imprint Academic. info

• Chapter 8. The Dutch weighted lottery: Practical politics. (p. 141-162). What is Conall Boyle’s opinion on this weighted lottery: see here [citatation from p. 161]

specifics everyone must know about the education system in the Netherlands

national studies
Academic studies in the Netherlands legally are national studies; the study of medicine in Rotterdam, for example, is equivalent to the study of medicine in Maastricht. Methods of instruction in Maastricht differ radically from those of the other studies in medicine in the Netherlands, yet the study is equivalent in all legal and professional aspects and in that sense a national study.

Secondary education'’s final examinations legally are higher education’s admissions examinations
The big secret of the education system in the Netherlands is that secondary education’s examinations legally grant admission to higher education. There is a restriction, of course, to secondary education that prepares for higher education: VWO [Voorbereidend Wetenschappelijk Onderwijs; Preparatory Arts and Sciences Education]. The regular system of admissions selection for higher education in the Netherlands, therefore, is the system of final examinations in secondary education peparing for higher education.

It is a big secret, because many of the individual Dutch commentators on the lottery system never seem to recognize this very basic fact. In contrast, all or almost all of the official committees that studied the question of how to select candidates in the situation of a numerus clausus, start their deliberations with the description of the law that stipulates that the mentioned secondary education examinations grant admission to higher education, regardles of gpa. In reality, there are practical restrictions in terms of particular courses that should have been followed in order to be admitted to a particular study.

Therefore the weighted lottery system used in admissions to studies legally designated ‘closed’ really is only a second stage admissions procedure.

what is a numerus fixus
The law stipulates that every study in every university (or vocational university, HBO) should admit every candidate in possession of an adequate diploma of secondary education. There is a law taking exception to this law, in case of particular studies that will make available a strictly limited number of places, a numerus clausus, stubbornly called a numerus fixus in the Netherlands, as I will do in the sequel. In order to gain the right to participate in the admissions procedure to a numerus fixus study, one should be in the possession of an appropriate diploma of secondary education (excepting some special categories of candidates, summed up in the law).

Historical line of events

I was just wondering, would it be a good idea to set up a kind of calendar of events/contingencies in The Netherlands concerning its special admissions procedures to higher education, also the kinds of arguments brought forward by different groups of stakeholders, as well as differences of opinion within those groups.

The line of events will start with the following topics

- how the law regulates admission to universities in the sixties: passing your examination makes one admissible to higher, gives one the right to enter the university course of choice.

- the department of medicine is having difficulties, then, providing enough places in hospitals for its students. The result is growing waiting lists. After Paris 1968 students do not accept such infringements of their right to get proper and timely instruction: a lawsuit of the student labor union SVB [Studenten Vak Bond] against a university is won by the union (Szirmai, 1971).

- Government then - appr. 1972 - is forced to adapt the law, to be able to restrict admission to the study of medicine according to the number of students the particular department will be able to handle without placing them on waiting lists. Installing a selection procedure, a special examination, or what have you, on such a short notice was impossible, and would surely not be acceptable to the candidates applying for admission the same year and the following year. Therefore a lottery procedure was chosen to effect the necessary reduction in numbers, such a procedure being regarded as not unduly favouring any particular subgroup, and already some years in use to decide who was to be placed on a waiting list. In higher vocational education instutions, who were not restricted by law in their admissions procedures, lotteries then were one of the instruments they used to reduce excessive numbers of applicants. In Germany already in the sixties departments of medicine were allowed to install a numerus cluaus, using lotteries to effect the reduction in numbers necessary.

There was some discussion on the question whether the subgroup having a grade point average of 7.5 or higher would be excepted from the lottery, the kind of debate that continued also in the Drenth commission. Newly surrected centers for educational research at the universities regarded it as their task to inform the public on the limited potential of selection procedures to contribute to whatever it is that one might call the efficiency of instruction at the university (Hazewinkel, on errors of decision in selection). Hofstee, accepting his chair in psychology in 1969, warned against way too optimistic ideas of the positive effects selection would have on the quality and/or efficiency of instruction in the department involved.

A curious phenomenon in the late sixties was that politicians and advisors of the government would like to see selective admissions introduced, while at the same time it was acknowledged that participation in higher education should grow still further (there had been already a tremendous growth in participation from the baby boom generation). A little thinking will lead to the conclusion it is rather pointless to pursue both policies at the same time. Yet that is exactly what polticians in the Netherlands in this new century again are trying to do. Even university presidents fall into the trap, not understanding that selectivity in itself will result in less students, and therefore less funding also. How stubbornly common sense can one be?

historical times

Cynthia Farrar (2009). Taking our chances with the ancient Athenians. In Alain-Christian Hernandez: Démocratie Athénienne - Démocratie Moderne: Tradition et Influences (167-217, discussion 218-234

• Lots of information and detail on lots, so to speak. Fine article, well documented. I'll give a few citations from the paper circled in the Kleroterians group.
• “To create a fully democratic political filter for self-government by all citizens, the Athenians used institutional devices selectively in different contexts and for different purposes. All relied on a fundamental principle of equal freedom: the ability of every citizen to choose whether and how to participate in governance. In the cluster of practices most closely associated with the sovereign power of the demos in assembly, lot and rotation played no part.”
• “The leaders of the people tended to come from the ranks of the well-bred and/or the well-heeled. But aspirants to great and sustained influence had to compete for that standing by persuading the assembly day after day that they, not their rivals, offered the best advice.”
• “In addition to judging political persuasiveness, the assembly also identified needed talent, experience, or skill for particular roles. At specifically designated meetings, the Assembly elected military and some financial officials. Election — by contrast with the lot —was considered an ‘aristocratic’ procedure, one that would result in the selection of the ‘best’, which could refer to the traditional elite and/or to the most capable.”
• “To function effectively, the democracy needed to designate groups that would be consistent over a period of time, to facilitate the work of the Assembly and hold it accountable to the laws (the Council, the juries), and to implement the Assembly’s decisions (the boards of magistrates, and the Council). And it was for these institutions that the Athenians used lot (for all these roles) and rotation (for the probouleutic and administrative functions).”
• “The lot’s impersonal and equal allocation of a chance to be chosen established the legitimacy of these administrative bodies. The Athenians inhibited corruption and prevented the appearance of corruption — corruption in the broad sense of a direct relationship between individual advantage and political office — by means of extraordinarily complex measures to ensure the transparency and impartiality of the selection process.”

Paul Demont (2010). Tirage au sort et démocratie en Grèce ancienne. laviedesidees.fr http://www.laviedesidees.fr/Tirage-au-sort-et-democratie-en.html

• Contrairement à l’idée admise, sur la foi de Platon et d’Aristote, chez les historiens de l’Antiquité, le tirage au sort n’est pas né avec la démocratie. C’est bien plutôt, selon Paul Demont, l’instauration de la démocratie qui a peu à peu démocratisé cette pratique d’origine aristocratique et religieuse.

R. Stewart (1998). Public office in early Rome. Ritual procedure & political practice. University of Michigan Press. isbn 0472107852

• Rather than looking at particular individuals and personalities in Roman politics, Stewart focuses on the religious institution of the allotment of duties among elected officials. She traces the definition of allotments and their historical development with examples from the Reforms of 444, 406 and 367 BC
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Thomas Gataker (1627/2008). The Nature and Uses of Lotteries. A Historical and Theological Treatise. Modernised with notes and bibliography by Conall Boyle. Imprint Academic. isbn 9781845401177

• “ . . . the first systematic exposition of a modern view of lotteries, not just as a form of gambling, but as a fair method of division.”
• Some chapter titles:
• 1. What a lottery is and on lotteries in general — 2. Chance and andom events — 4. Ordinary lotteries for serious uses. — The lawdulness of ordinary lotteries and precautions in their use. — Cautions to be observed in the use of gambling. — 10. Extraordinary divinatory lotteries
• Some sections of Ch. 4:
• 2. Distributing sacred offices and duties by lottery — Distributon of civil offices in the bible — Distribution of offices: The Greeks — The Romans — Italy today — Lottery for sharing various tasks — Distributing land by lottery: An example fom scripture — Distributing goods and chattels: Biblical example.

Patricia Crone & Adam Silverstein (2010). The ancient Near East and Islam: The case of lot-casting. Journal of Semitic Studies, 55, 423-450. pdf

• from the abstract This article is a contribution to the question how far there was continu- ity between ancient Near Eastern and Islamic culture. It focuses on the practice of using lot-casting to allocate inheritance shares, conquered land, and official functions, and briefly surveys the history of this practice from ancient through Hellenistic to pre-Islamic times in order to examine its Islamic forms as reflected in historical and legal sources. It is argued that the evidence does suggest continuity between the ancient and the Islamic Near East, above all in the first century of the hijra, but also long thereafter, if only at a fairly low level of juristic interest.

Oliver Dowlen (2008). 'The political potential of sortition. A study of the random selection of citizens for public office.' Imprint Academic. isbn 9781845401795 Table of contents — Introduction — Plates [look this up! The lotterystone — kleroterion — above is from commons.wikimedia.org]




sixties




In the binary system in the Netherlands in the sixties separate laws see on the universities and technical universities on the one side, and vocational colleges on the other side. Admission to university studies is restricted to applicants having passed the right examinations in secondary education. Some exceptions are allowed (colloquium doctum, or the route via a vocational college). Having the right examination papers, the choice of study as well as of the institution is free, admission is unrestricted. The situation is quite different for the vocational colleges: the colleges are allowed to select their applicants and many of them do, using all kinds of procedures and instruments, including lotteries for some or all applicants. After all, the sixties see an enormous growth of participation in higher education, some studies grow harder than others, most of them in the vocational sector (the arts, journalism, hotel school). Medicine, dentistry and especially veterinary studies have difficulties to accommodate the growing number of students.


There is a general historical context as well, as one might suspect: the sixties and early seventies saw a lot of student protest and revolt, much of which had to do with chances to be admitted to higher education by candidates from poorer etc. backgrounds. In this climate the possibility to decide on admissions in particular situations using a lottery, next to other instruments, was not only much discussed, but practiced as well. Within the social democratic party there was a strong current of somewhat radical ideas, in the ranks and files, as well as in the executive committee and among cabinet members (Ger Klein among them). The Klein bill was defended in the social democratic fraction in the Lower House by Kees Kolthoff. Kolthoff is a psychologist, he had been head of the small research center on higher education of the University of Amsterdam. In fact, he was my first employer. By the beginning of the 70's every university had its own center for research on higher education. These centers were nationally united in a kind of executive platform (CRWO is its acronym). This platform used to take a stand on issues regarding higher education. The admission to numerus fixus studies was such an issue, Hans van der Vleugel and I conceived the vision on the matter that was endorsed bij the platform before it was taken to print. (Onderzoek van Onderwijs, april, 1974).html




1971 How to effect the first time numerus fixus? By selection, lottery, or what?




Dutch parliamentary documents have been made aavilable online on http://www.statengeneraaldigitaal.nl/, a site maintained by the Royal Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, kb.nl).


The problem was, in 1971, that the emergency law restricting admission to, in particular, medical courses, really was an emergency law: students in secondary education were not prepared for it. Therefore it was deemed fairest to use a lottery system, and grant the very best candidates immediate access (in 1972 this number was 8% of the group of applicants).


The document on the law giving trajectory of the emergency law is: Totstandkoming van het wetsontwerp inzake tijdelijke beperking van toelating van eerstejaarsstudenten aan de faculteit geneeskunde. It is archived by the National Archive, The Hague [ Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Afdelingen Hoger Onderwijs, Hoger Onderwijs en Wetenschappen en het Directoraat-Generaal voor de Wetenschappen van het Ministerie van Onderwijs, Kunsten en Wetenschappen, (1911) 1918 - 1975, nummer toegang 2.14.58 inventarisnummer 203-205. ]


Also: Nationaal Archief NL-HaNA, OKW / Hoger Onderwijs, 2.14.58, inv.nr. 221. Totstandkoming en uitvoering van de wet van 6 juli 1972, Stb. 355, houdende voorzieningen van tijdelijke aard met betrekking tot de inschrijving van studenten aan Nederlandse universiteiten en hogescholen (Machtigingswet Inschrijving Studenten). 1971-1974


I do not have copies of these documents. They are not available online.




1972 First time nationwide lottery


A numerus fixus will be in place for the year 1972-1973. The admissions procedure is as simple as possible, granting the very best candidates a place, and offering the other candidates for teh remaining slots a straight lottery. The best candidates are the candidates with a gpa on the final examination of at least 7½. The bill was accepted in the Lower House, 29 June 1972. The enabling law of 1972 [Machtigingswet] did not specify which opportunity there would be in 1973 for candidates failing to obtain a place in 1972.







1973




Wijnen, W. (1973). Wie mag in 1973 naar de universiteit? Universiteits Krant Groningen 31-1-1973.

• Wynand Wijen is the first to mention the possibility of a weighted lottery als a compromise solution.




1974




An academic committee chaired by H. J. A. Duparc, proposed 25 November 1974 a weighted lottery, instead of a straight lottery as preferred by the Academic Council [Academische Raad] [Commissie Algemene Vraagstukken VWO-WO (November 1974). Selectie-procedure bij de hantering van een numerus fixus. Academische Raad [74/74-3]

• "Op grond van een analyse van de meest gebruikte argumenten in de discussies rondom het selectievraagstuk en van afweging van de zwaarte van de argumenten, komt de commissie tot de slotsom dat een systeem van gewogen loting in de huidige situatie de voorkeur verdient." [Persbericht, Academische Raad, 2 December 1974] (On pp. 1216 examples of possible procedures)
• This committee proposes to use six variables to determine the particular class (of four classes, the highest being direct admission) the candidate belongs to:
  1. gpa summative examination,
  2. gpa end of 5th schoolyear,
  3. number of classes flunked,
  4. gpa special courses (science, math, biology),
  5. number of times already participated in an admission by lottery process.
  [In the 1975 law only the first variable is used: gpa of the summative examination]




1975




1975 An enabling bill in Parliament: the proposed straight lottery is changed into a weighted lottery


- The Dutch Parliament in 1975 discusses the way the restriction of numbers - called 'numerus fixus' instead of the better term 'numerus clausus' - should be effected for the years to come, until the problems with the restricted numbers of places available were solved (of course, that never happened). During that debate one of the Christian parties proposed the weighted lottery as a compromise between the position of the parties on the left (unweighted lottery) and those on the right (selection for all). The result was a weighted lottery scheme winning the support of all parties in Parliament.

"The 1975 weighted lottery


The first example, which will be discussed at some length, is the weighted lottery model for admission of students to closed (numerus clausus) studies, such as medicine, dentistry, and veterinary science. One particular solution under this model was proposed by Vermaat, a Dutch professor of mathematics and member of parliament, and the general model is easily derived from that proposal. It states that in cases of restricted admission, an applicant's chances of being admitted - that is, the number of lottery tickets he or she receives - is a monotonically increasing function of his or her score (for example, a secondary school grade point average). Clearly, the model fills the gap between straight lottery selection and comparative selection.

The model may be formalized to a certain extent as follows: An applicant with score x receives a chance of admission f(x) where f is a monotonically increasing function such that



Σ f (x) p(x) = R

or       ∫ f (x) p(x) dx = R,

with R the selection ratio and p(x) the empirical score distribution summing to 1.


In the special case of a straight lottery,



f (x) = R for all x,

whereas in the case of comparative selection,



f (x) = 1 for x > a

and         f (x) = 0 for x < a

the cutoff point a being defined by



∫ _a^xmax p(x) dx = R.

Figure 1 illustrates the model. Weighted lottery selection has been applied in The Netherlands on a national scale as an admission policy for studies such as medicine. In practice, applicants are classified according to grade point average, and ratio weights representing the relative proportion admitted to each class are established a priori."



Willem K. B. Hofstee (1983). The Case for Compromise in Educational Selection and Grading. In Scarvia B. Anderson and John S. Helmick (Eds) (1983). On educational testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. p. 109-127. html


I have a 1975 document describing the exact procedure (Letter to the chairman of the Second Chamber of Parliament, 13 May 1975).

The technique is interesting, separating the lottery procedure from the allocation procedure. In an early stage, even before the gpa's will be known, the candidates will receive a rank number determined by lottery. As soon as it is possible to allocate some candidates in some or all categories, as soon as the result of the final examinations are in, part of the available slots will be filled with the candidates in possession of the lowest numbers. Definitive results of the examanitions will only come in much later, the remaining slots will then be filled by, again, admitting the students having the lowest numbers in the particular category concerned.

In this way, some candidates will know already before the final examinations that they probably will be admitted (if they succeed in passing the examination, regardles of their gpa), or not.

For more details, see the appendix to my (1975), the Ger Klein letter to teh Lower House here

This kind of system wil have been in use throughout the 90's, and probably will still be in use today.


The weighting in the lottery persisted in its original quantification, the one in the Vermaat amendment. The law was changed after de Drenth committee had reported its advice, the particular weighting system now being used is described on the website of the IB-Group in Groningen here [in Dutch only, regrettably]


In his (1983 html) Willem Hofstee summarizes the different positions of participants in the debate on admission to numerus fixus studies, i.e. closed studies. Of special interest is the opinion of secondary school students, the one group having the highest personal stakes in the method of admission chosen by government. See the box below.

The opinions of secondary school students


"A final argument in favor of using lotteries is that they are more acceptable than comparative selection, at least to Dutch secondary school students. In a study by Hofstee and Trommar (1976), secondary school students in their last year were asked the following question: If you could advise the government on admission policies, which would you recommend? Since the investigation was carried out under the auspices of the advisory committee referred to earlier, our respondents were indeed indirectly advising the government. The straight lottery method received 40 percent of the votes, comparative selection only 10 percent; the remaining 50 percent went to weighted lottery. These results have been replicated in at least three other unpublished studies."

Willem K. B. Hofstee (1983). The Case for Compromise in Educational Selection and Grading. In Scarvia B. Anderson and John S. Helmick (Eds) (1983). On educational testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. p. 109-127. html

W. K. B. Hofstee and P. M. Trommar "Selectie en Loting: Meningen van VWO-Eindexaminandi." Heymans Bulletin, No. 25 1, Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, 1976.


At least partly an effect of the weighted lottery procedure is that the number of females admitted is larger than that of males, because of better gpa's. This state of affairs will have an enormous impact on the medical sector, because women doctors prefer not to work fulltime.

I do remind the reaer of the fact that, previous to the admissions preferentially honoring candidates having higher gpa's, the medical studies were chosen by academically less brilliant candidates, compared to, for example, students choosing physics. (data from the Central Bureau of Statistics). So there has been a sizeable impact on the allocation of scarce talent to medical studies versus studies in the sciences.

Another point of some importance is the fact that a numerus fixus artificially seals of the labour market for medics. There is big market disturbance. This is, by the way, one of the arguments nowadays within some plitical parties and even ministries to do away with the instrument of a numerus fixus altogether. As you will know, one way or the other, enormous costs are involved in artificially 'protecting' a highly specific labour market, as well as in admiiting too many applicants to studies as costly as medicine.




---

On lot numbers


Because GPA is an ingredient of the procedure, the allocation can be made only after the GPA has become available somewhere in June, or even after some candidates have taken second chances on their exam, somewhere in August. Yet it possible to give many candidates many months before a clear idea about their being admitted with a high probability, or not being admitted with a high probability. I will try to sketch the procedure, but because it is a highly unusual one I recommend perusing the original document (in Dutch) to get a better idea of what is going on here.

Immediately in 1975 this allocation has been separated from the lottery procedue. Much earlier all registered candidates will be assigned a unique number, say in February, effectively putting a rank order on the candidates. A low number signifies a high probability to be admitted, a high number a low probability, in between there is a range of uncertainty. That is, already before the exams, many candidates can be pretty sure about being admitted, other candidates of not being admitted, while a group in between will still be highly uncertain. How is this possible, because GPA is not yet available? It is possible because a candidate eventually will be assigned a particular lottery class on the basis of the GPA obtained, the allocation of places then will be in order of the candidates having te lower number, until all slots made available to that category at that moment, have been filled. (The procedue is rather involved. See the original document transcription, in Dutch, about the details here). I have a 1975 document describing the exact procedure (Letter to the chairman of the Second Chamber of Parliament, 13 May 1975).


The technique is interesting, separating the lottery procedure from the allocation procedure. In an early stage, even before the gpa's will be known, the candidates will receive a rank number determined by lottery. As soon as it is possible to allocate some candidates in some or all categories, the available slots will be filled with the candidates in possession of the lowest numbers.


This kind of system has been in use ever since 1975.


I will select the crucial passages for presentation here (in Dutch, but you will be able to follow the numerics) here.




---

Peter Karstanje (1981). Selection for higher education in the Netherlands. European Journal of Education, 16, 197-208. preview

---

• Higher Education Admission Policies

  
  In the Netherlands, only the Parliament can decide to restrict access to universities. This restriction is an encroachment on the legal right of pupils with a VWO-certificate to sit university examinations. A bill, proposing a temporary numerus clausus for medical studies in 1966 was rejected on the grounds that graduates from pre-university schools had legal freedom of choice. In 1972, however, a bill that made it possible to restrict the number of students, on the grounds that there were an insufficient number of places, was passed. Though initially regarded as a temporary measure, it has since been prolonged every year.

  To date two different criteria for admission exist. Until 1976 students with an average of at least 7.5 [note: Marks are awarded from one to ten with six required for a pass] in the VWO examination were admitted. The rest of the candidates were subject to lottery. One reason for direct admission of pupilswith better examination results was the proven correlation between examination results ..and success at unlversity.

  This procedure, however, met with strong opposition, especially fromthe responsible Secretaryof State [Ger Klein, PvdA. b.w.] in the former Socialist/Christian Democratic coalition who strongly resisted conferring privileges on certain groups of students. The correlation between examination results and success in university was very low, he pointed out. Indeed, research which correlated secondary school examination results with early university examination showed correlation coefficients of 0.22 to 0.4 a predictive value of no more than 20%.

  Another reason for the Secretary of State's resistance to direct admission of pupils with better examination results had to do with the consequences for secondary education. As it was, the government had taken measures to broaden curricular development in secondary education and to postpone selection. The Secretary of State feared that the admission criteria would result in an even greater emphasis on examination subjects at the expense of other important educational goals.

  Since 1976, however, the Parliament has decided in the annual debates about admission policies upon a second principle, namely weighted balloting.The higher one's examinationmarks, the higher the chance of being admitted.

  A third admission policy has been presentedin a Bill by the present (Conservative) minister of education [Arie Pais, VVD. b.w.]. In this Bill the intake problem is (for the first time officially) seen as a structural problem, and not as a temporary one. The proposed admission policy is rather complicated. In short, one-third of the places is available, without further selection, for the applicants with the best examination results.Other applicantssit an extratest in two importantsubjects.The average of the test marks and the VWO-examination results is then computed. One-third of the available places is then given to the students with the highest marks. The remaining third of the places is assigned by lottery in sucha way that girls (and boys who have finished military service) have a higher chance of being drawn. A small percentage is reserved for applicants without the required certificates and for foreign students.

  204-205

• Be warned that the Bill Pais had in mind did not even reacht parliament, b.w. Also, a new education minister, Jos van Kemenade, withdrew the order (given to Cito) to develop the new selective test mentioned above byPeter Karstanje.




1980




Vilhelm Aubert (1980). Chance in social affairs. In Jack Dowie & Paul Lefrere (Eds) (1980). Risk & Chance. Selected Readings (74-97). Open University Press. isbn 0335002625 [on lotteries]




1994




John R. Boyce (1994). Allocation of goods by lottery. Economic Enquiry, 32, 457-476.




1996




Christine Aziz (19 July 1996). Star student challenges lottery. Times Higher Education, html

• Describes the incident that led to the appointment of a ministerial committee presided by Pieter Drenth, a former president of the KNAW (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences)




1997






The report of the Drenth Committee is available [in Dutch, pdf] here. This pdf is without the appendices.


The Cabinet put pressure on the Drenth Committee, and the the Committee succumbed to it. After the release of the report, Chairman Pieter Drenth publicly confessed to this state of affairs, deeply ashamed.


The feeling among psychologists like myself, in the nineties, was that the law would eventually grant immediate admission to candidates having really high gpa's. In this opinion the events in the later '90's were inevitable. The question was not whether, but when; a highly visible case would be the trigger, and so it happened. It really was a minor change in the weighted lottery procedure. The Drenth committee retained the lottery as an essential ingredient, as all committees previously had done. The minister eventually presented a bill that was closer to the old bill than the proposal by the Drenth committee was.




1999




Admission to the study of medicine in the Netherlands is regulated by law because the number of slots is strictly limited to to a numerus fixus. Under this law applicants scoring a GPA of 8 or better on their secondary school examination will be admitted without any further selection.




sources

P. J. D. Drenth (1999). The selection of medical students in the Netherlands — Reconciling the incompatibles. Commission on the Points System Research Paper No 3 Department of Education, Dublin: Irish Government. [no longer online. An incomplete version available, mail me]

Szirmai, Z. (1971). Wachtlijsten. Nederlands Juristenblad, 4-9-1971. [waiting lists]




2011




Hyland, Áine (2011). Entry to Higher Education in Ireland in the 21st Century. Discussion Paper for the NCCA/HEA Seminar, September 21, 2011. pdf. Last accessed November 14, 2011.




2013







---

Peter Stone (2013). Access to Higher Education by the Luck of the Draw Article  in  Comparative Education Review researchgate.net .




---

Peter Stone (2013). A Renaissance for random selection? In Kari Palonen a.o. (Eds.) (2013). Redescriptions. Yearbook of political thought, conceptual history, and feminist theory. Vol. 16, 2012/2013 (125-136). pdf (whole book)




The arguments from personnel selection


Here the classical study by Cronbach and Gleser (1957) is still the most important source. Selection is but a special case of the more general problem of optimal placement. Both are typically treated as institutional problems, meaning that what is 'optimal' is regarded so as from the perspective of the institution (shop, school, army, country, humanity). The complementary part, of course, is what is in the interests of the candidates seeking admission to jobs, places, careers, life fulfillment. By now it will already be clear that selection is a rather narrow and even biased concept, a fact that typically not many participants in debates on admission procedures are even remotely aware of. The point being, of course, that selecting institutions basically do not care shit about what will happen to the candidates the institution rejects. Well, there is some equity talk: rejected applicants should get away with the feeling they have been rejected justly. Which is a terrible thing to do to rejected applicants.




The arguments from justice/equity theory


The justice theory hinted at in the title of course being that of John Rawls.




The arguments from research: empirical truth







Literature




Conall Boyle (2010). Lotteries for education. Origins, Experiences, Lessons. Imprint Academic. isbn 9781845402105 paperback

• Description
  Lotteries are widely used to decide places (seats) at schools, colleges and universities. Conall Boyle explores many examples to find out why. The emotional turmoil that the use of ballots can cause to students and parents alike is graphically described. But lottery selection teaches lessons too; now we can find proper answers to controversial questions like ‘Does choice work?’
  
  This book will be of interest to parents, pupils and teachers as well as educational administrators. Any student applying for admission to a university course should learn about the amazing weighted lottery for entry to medical schools in the Netherlands. There is a better way: it's a lottery!
• Medical School in Holland 1995 situation (Drenth)
• Chapters (there is not yet a list on the Imprint Academic website):
  • School choice by lottery? The ‘Coice’ agenda.
  • Lotteries for places at a school: What do parents think?
  • School-place lotteries in a borough: House-prie effects.
  • Voucher lotteries: 'Natural scientific experiments'
  • Arguments about school-place lotteries
  • Schools selecting academically: Measuring ability.
  • University entrance by lottery: Judging merit
  • The Dutch weighted lottery: Practical politics.
  • Lotteries for university places: Dubious or effcient & fair?
  • Student ousing in the USA: Strategic behavior.
  • Lotteries for teachers: Sharing jobs.
  • Lottery practicalities: How it should be done.
  • To conclude: Lotteries for education: Yes or no?
  • List of examples of lotteries for educational places (p. 5-6)
• Conall Boyle on the Dutch weighted lottery system, as regards entry into medial education [p. 161]: 'Returing to the saga of Meike Vernooij and the changes to the Netherlands medical school weighted lottery entry system we can interpret the behavior of the actors in a more realistic and less mean-spirited manner. There are no powerful wellfunded lobbies seeking to extract 'rent' from the taxpayer. Corporate bodies like the medical associations and the university lecturers’ trade union have influence, but their advice will (mostly) be intended to promote the general good, not enrich their members. The minister of education [Jo Ritzen, b.w.] who made the fateful decision to firstly set up the Drenth commission, and then partly rejected its recommendations was acting at least in part with the same benevolent intentions, although vote-catching would also have played a part. A for Miss Vernooij herself, calling in aid notions of fairness and merit was, in these circumstances, self-interested, but could work against her at other times. The students' union which had always been a staunch supporter of the weighted lottery could still be accused of wanting to give their members an easy ride, but did so for entirely defensible reasons."




the Netherlands

Flora Goudappel (1999). The Dutch system of lottery for studies. European Journal for Education Law and Policy, 3, 23-27. pdf

• abstract In the Netherlands, students for branches of study with a scarcity of places are selected through a system of weighed lottery at the moment. Because of unjustice felt in society concerning several recent cases of potential students who lost the lottery and because of the report of the Drenth Commission as well as the advice of the Education Council, the government has proposed a new system. This system will be threefold: direct admittance, weighed lottery, and decentralized selection. Still, the consequences of this new system are doubtful.

Hofstee, W. K. B. (1983). The case for compromise in educational selection and grading. In Anderson, S. B., & Helmick, J. S.: On educational testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. 109-127. Gaat vooral in op loten als selectiemiddel. [html]

Nienke R. Schripsema, Anke M. van Trigt, Susanna M. Lucieer, Anouk Wouters, Gerda Croiset, Axel P. N. Themmen, Jan C. C. Borleffs, Janke Cohen-Schotanus (2017). Participation and selection effects of a voluntary selection process. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 22, 463-476. open access

• We included data from two cohorts of medical students admitted to Erasmus MC, Rotterdam and VUmc, Amsterdam, The Netherlands and compared them to previously published data from Groningen medical school, The Netherlands. All included students were admitted based on either (1) a top pre-university grade point average, or (2) a voluntary selection process, or (3) weighted lottery.




More literature


Publications not mentioned in the text above.




the Netherlands




Frijhoff, W. (1992). The Netherlands. In Clark, B.R., & Neave, G.R. (Eds.)(1992). The encyclopedia of higher education. Oxford: Pergamon Press. I, 491-504).

• On admissions to numerus fixus studies: "The selection of students involves allocation by lottery, weighted by the average marks of the school-leaving examination, — a hybrid solution that often causes surprise among foreign observers. However, it reflects perfectly the prevailing Dutch ideology: crude meritocracy (which is in fact favorable to the higher social classes) should be reconciled with equality of educational opportunities for all."

Th. J. ten Cate en H. L. Hendrix (2001). De eerste ervaringen met selectie voor de artsopleiding. Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Geneeskunde, 145, 1364-1368. html

• abstract "Admittance to a medical school in the Netherlands has for decades been based on a grade point average weighted lottery system of secondary school leavers. Since 2000, the Dutch Higher Education and Scientific Research Act has given medical schools the option of selecting candidates. In 2000, two of the eight Dutch medical schools started selection experiments for 10 percent of their places. Leiden University Medical Center invited school leavers who had studied a more varied range of extra subjects to attend a 10-day summer school. All 54 candidates were ranked on the basis of assessments and tests; 24 of them were admitted. Utrecht University invited students with a higher education degree to a selection day. An application form, a structured interview and a questionnaire determined the ranking of 53 candidates; 24 of them were admitted. Both schools were satisfied with the manner in which the selection procedure worked. However, it is not yet possible to draw any definite conclusions about the effectiveness of the selection procedure."
[heb ik niet gezien, genoemd in Dekker, 2008]

Louise C. Urlings-Strop, Theo Stijnen, Axel P. N. Themmen & Ted A. W. Splinter (2009). Selection of medical students: a controlled experiment. Medical Education, 43, 175-183.

• Admissions to the study of medicine, the Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, cohorts 2001 until 2004.




other countries

DeWitt, L. B. (1971). A lottery system for higher education. Notes on the Future of Education, volume 2 issue 3, summer 1971, 9-12. A publication of the Educational policy Research Center at Syracuse.

Simpson, M. A. (1975). Selection of medical students by lottery. Journal of Medical Education, 50, 417-418.

• Refers earlier articles van Rhoads et al. 'Motivation, medical school admissions, and student performance' in this journal, by Funkensten in Juli 1970 in this journal proporing a lottery systeem, a book Medical education: a critical approach. Butterworths. containing proposals for lotteries, and an article in the Lancet (1973, pp. 706-7 en 941). I have not seen any of these items, regrettably.




Access policy and procedures and the law in U.S. higher education. New York: The International Council for Educational Development. 1978.

• Bestaat uit: L. G. Simon: Access to higher education and the law; A. J. Irby: A review of U. S. admissions policies and practices. J. K. Britell & W. B. Schrader: College admissions testing in the United States. S. V. Keochakian: Nonintellectual factors in admissions. p. 42: procedural due process; Bound together with: Access to higher education: Two perspectives. A comparative study of the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States of America. Final report of the German-U.S. study group. 1978. p. 32: For fields in which there is a wide discrepancy between the numbers of applicants and study places, the new system of selection will assign a substantial proportion of places using a lottery weighted on the basis of Abitur grades.

ERIC 1982-1991Ravelo-Hurtado,-Nestor-E.Nitko,-Anthony-J.Selection Bias According to a New Model and Four Previous Models Using Admission Data from a Latin American University.

• This paper describes a modified lottery selection procedure and compares it with several popular unbiased candidate selection models in a Venezuelan academic selection situation. The procedure uses modified version of F. S. Ellett's lottery method as a means of partially satisfying the principles of substantive fairness. Ellett's procedure establishes an upper cut-score and recommends acceptance of everyone whose test score is at or above the cut-score. A second lower cut-score is also established, so that everyone scoring at or below this score is rejected. After hiring or admitting candidates in the upper group, additional openings are filled by those between the upper and lower cut-scores. The modification of Ellett's procedure, referred to as the probability level assignment model (PLAM), involves division of the score scale between the upper and lower cut-scores into several equal-width intervals, within which applicants are selected via lottery in proportion to the probability for success upon admission or employment. Results from application of this method to 272 first-year students at the Universidad de Oriente in Cumana, Venezuela, indicate that the PLAM appropriately addresses the various criteria of selection fairness. Eight data tables are appended. (TJH)

Sutton Trust (2007). Ballots in School Admissions pdf

• A survey of the use of ballots in admissions to universities and schools overseas, and a poll of public attitudes to school admissions in the UK. The research suggests that ballots may be an acceptable means of deciding which pupils gain entry to oversubcribed schools, when used in conjunction with other admissions criteria.
• This pdf document "summarises the findings of two pieces of research commissioned by the Trust". I have not been able to locate the original research on the Trust's web page [as of September 22, 2007], it is a survey done by Ipsos MORI. I do not like anonymous research, bw

Laura Buratti (4-5-2016). Les étudiants en médecine franciliens seront choisis par tirage au sort. LE MONDE | 04.05.2016 à 19h32 • Mis à jour le 10.05.2016 à 10h55 | page




other lotteries

Peter Stone (submitted) Review of: Oliver Dowlen (2008). The political potential of sortition: A study of the random selection of citizens for public office. Imprint Academic. Philosophical Quarterly

Focus on: Sortition. The Mammalian Daily, January 17, 2013. html

The Park’s 35 Archons are selected each year by a process known as sortition or the lottery or allotment method. This was the system put into place by Jor, The Park’s first leader and the founder of modern zoocracy.

Sortition has its origins in some of the oldest Human societies. After completing an exhaustive study of ancient Human political systems, Jor concluded that the basic tenets of zoocracy would best be maintained through the use of sortition rather than by direct elections. With the assistance of a panel of consultants, Jor made modifications to some of the original rules of sortition and crafted the system that has been in continuous use since the establishment of zoocracy.

Peter Stone (submitted). A renaissance for random selection? History of Political Thought Review of

• Anthony Barnett and Peter Carty The Athenian Option: Radical Reform for the House of Lords, 2 nd edition (Imprint Academic, 2008), 124 pp., £25.00, ISBN 1845401409 (cloth).
• Oliver Dowlen, The Political Potential of Sortition: A Study of the Random Selection of Citizens for Public Office (Imprint Academic, 2008), viii + 264 pp., £30.00, ISBN 1845401379 (cloth).
• Thomas Gataker, The Nature and Use of Lotteries, 2nd edition, edited by Conall Boyle (Imprint Academic, 2008), xxiv + 231 pp., £17.95, ISBN 1845401174 (pbk).
• Barbara Goodwin, Justice by Lottery, 2nd edition (Imprint Academic, 2005), viii + 269 pp., £17.95, ISBN 1845400259 (pbk).

Rosenblatt, J. R., & Filliben, J. J. (1971). Randomization and the draft lottery. Science, 111, 306-308.

Willms, D. C. (1974). Georgia's land lottery of 1832. Chronicles of Oklahoma 52: 52-60. Mentioned in Jon Elster's Solomonic Judgements. Weighted lottery! niet in UBL. [I have not seen a copy of this text]

Sher, G. (1980). What makes a lottery fair? Nous, 14, 203-216.

• I have seen the article. Does not contain any applications.

ERIC 1982-1991Jassem,-Harvey-C.Glasser,-Theodore-L.Random Allocation of Licenses and the Public Interest in Ownership Diversity.1981

• For nearly half a century, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has been exercising its authority to grant and deny applications for broadcast licenses. In the process of comparison used by the FCC to assess qualified new applicants, two considerations weigh heavily: (1) the best practicable service to the public, and (2) maximum diffusion of control of the mass communications media. Sometimes comparative hearings play a vital role in the Commission's efforts to consider such substantive criteria as ownership and ownership diversity. However, since the comparative hearings have proven to be neither an effective nor an efficient administrative procedure for choosing among qualified applicants, the United States Congress has authorized the FCC to use a lottery approach, a system of random selection. For the system to include underrepresented owners, the Commission could assign a particular, though arbitrary, preference to those applicants or the Commission could choose to assess the degree of each minority applicant's lack of representation and assign a preference factor to each minority applicant. The latter approach would accommodate differences among minority applicants. Nevertheless, as efficient as a lottery may be for allocating a license or permit, its effectiveness at securing the best practicable service or promoting ownership diversification--the two standard comparative issues--is suspect. Any system of random selection limits the Commission's discretion and inevitably leaves important decisions and choices to chance. (HOD)

Wasserman, D. (1996). Let them eat chances: probability and distributive justice. Economics and Philosophy, 12, 29-49.

• 30: If there are two distinct conceptions of probability involved in the appraisal of lotteries, there are also two distinct views of how a lotery exploits probability to achieve fair treatment. These views can be characterized as distributive and procedural. 48; But we live in a world where we can divide resources with only partial loss of value, and we can increase the production of goods to reduce or eliminate their scarcity. Both options have significant costs: there will be a loss of net value in dividing a good whenever the sum of the parts has less value than the undivided whole; there will be greater scarcity elsewhere oif we increase the production of this good. If we see a lottery as distrbuting something of value besides the good itself, or as partially satisfying the demand for that good, we may be more inclined to reject the costs of increased division or production. We may be more inclined to give the undividd good to one claimant and let the rest eat chances, or to maintain the existing scarcity of that good rather than to divert productive resources from other goods. If, on the other hand, we see lotteries as having only the procedural virtue of respecting equal entitlements by allocatingg disputed goods in a manner not known or reasonably believed to favor any claimant, they will offer a less attractive alternative to the more equal distribution of resources. We may be more willing to incur the costs of fuller division or increased production.

Elster, J. (1989). Solomonic judgements. Studies in the limitations of rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• p. 1: My concern here is ... with failures in rational choice theory. p. 2: in this book ... the emphasis is on the indeterminacy of rational choice theory.
• p. 37 I shall argue that we have a strong reluctance to admit uncertainty and indeterminacy in human affairs. Rather than accept the limits of reason, we prefer rituals of reason.
• p. 114; Using a weighted lottery (or multiple queues) could increase everybody's chance of getting the scarce good, if the inequality created opportunities or incentives that in the end would make the good less scarce. The regulation of access to medical or technical education by a weighted lottery could be justified by this argument. Ik kan deze gedachte van Elster niet volgen.
• p. 121: The basic reason for using lotteries to make decisions is honesty. [Leuk: dat onderscheid tussen fairness en honesty!) Honesty requires us to recognize the pervasiveness of uncertainty and incommensurability, rather than deny or avoid it. Some decisions are going to be arbitrary and epistemically random no matter what we do, no matter how hard we try to base them on reasons. Chance will regulate a large part of our lives, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. By taming chance we can bring the randomness of the universe under our control as far as possible and keep free of self-deception as well. The requirements of personal causation [De Charms (1968)] and autonomy [Elster (1983a), ch. 3] are reconciled by the conscious use of chance to make decisions when rational argument fails. Although the bleakness of this vision may disturb us, it is preferable to a life built on the comforting falsehood that we can always know what to do. Otto Neurath characterizes the belief that we can always have good reasons for our decisions as pseudorationalism. Whereas Cartesian 'rationalism sees its chief triumph in the clear recognition of the limits of actual insight', pseudorationalism 'leads partly to self-deception, partly to hypocrisy'. To conclude the present chapter I can do no better than to quote his further comments on this distinction: [ik neem alleen het tweede deel van het citaat over] "Let us go back to the parable of Descartes. For the wanderers lost in the forest, who have no indication at all as to which direction to follow, it is most important to march on energetically. One of them is driven in some direction by instinct, another by an omen; a third will carefully consider all eventualities, weigh all arguments and counter-arguments and, on the basis of inadequate premises of whose deficiencies he is unaware, take one definitte direction which he considers the correct one. The fourth, finally, will think as well as he can, but not refrain from admitting that his insight is too weak, and quietly allow himself to decide by lot. Let us assume that the chances of getting out of the forest are the same for the four wanderers; nevertheless there will be people whose judgment of the behaviour of the four is very different. To the seeker after truth whose esteem of insight is highest, the behaviour of the last wandere will be congenial, and that of the pseudorationalist most repellent. In these four kinds of behaviour we can perhaps see four stages of development of mankind without exactly claiming that each one of them has come into full existence. (Neurath, 1913, 9-11 [The lost wanderers of Descartes and the auxiliary motive. In R. S. Cohen and M. Neurath (Eds) 1983: Otto Neurath: philosophical papers. Reidel. See also Michael Stöltzner doc]).

Filimon Peonidis (2009). Bringing direct democracy in a representative assembly: The case of allotted MPs. pdf




theory

Conall Boyle (1998). Organizations selecting people: how the process could be made fairer by the appropriate use of lotteries. The Statistician, 47, 291-321. pdf

Peter Stone (2011). The Luck of the Draw. The Role of Lotteries in Decision Making. Oxford University Press. isbn 978-0-19-975610-0. See the OUP site voor its contents. [I have not yet seen this one] review on the Kleroterians site.




in history

George Tridimas (in print august 2011). Constitutional choice in ancient Athens: The rationality of selection to office by lot. Constitutional Political Economy. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1916053




Links




Ben Wilbrink. Bibliography of publications and articles in the media regarding theuse of lotteries in admisisons. Most entries are Dutch ones, of course, but there are some highly relevant and more general English ones on lotteries and justice. html

Kleroterians blog site Equality by lot http://equalitybylot.wordpress.com/

Conall Boyle has a website dedicated to the topic of lotteries used to make decisions—or rather 'let them happen'—in education as well as in other domains, such as the economy or economical affairs. site. Also on his site: lottery in political theory, lottery and democracy (think of the jury system in law as an example).




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How the San Francisco School Lottery Works, And How It Doesn’t. By Katrina Schwartz JANUARY 11, 2018 web page

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Dylan Wiliam (2003). Constructing difference assessment in education. In L. Burton (Ed.) Which way social justice in mathematics education? (pp. 189-207). Praeger Press.

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• I develop a principle for the use of assessments in selection, based on the idea that if we cannot make selections fairly, we should make them at random.




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Peter C. Fishburn (1978). Acceptable social choice theories. abstract. In Hans W. Gottinger, and Werner Leinfellner (Eds) (1978). Decision theory and social ethics. Issues in social choice. Reidel. isbn 9027708878, pp 133-152 info

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Hofstee, W. K. B. (1990). Allocation by lot: a conceptual and empirical analysis. Social Science Information, 29, 745-763. 10.1177/053901890029004004 preview & researchgate pdf




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Rebecca Zwick (2007). College admissions in twenty-first-century America: the role of grades, tests, and games of chance. Harvard Educational Review, 119- scihub [NB: Zwick heeft geen flauw idee van de specifieke situatie van de Nederlandse numerus fixus. Ook in haar latere boek (2017, 'Who gets in?') verspreidt ze misverstand op misverstand over de gewogen loting in Nederland. Ik begrijp dat wel: het is verdraaid lastig om onderwijsstelsels in andere landen/culturen goed in beeld te krijgen.]

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Gil Delannoi, Oliver Dowlen, Peter Stone (2013). The lottery as a democratic institution. Policy Institute.

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Peter Stone 2022 In the shadow of Rawls: Egalitarianism today. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-022-10272-1 academia.edu

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Ben Wilbrink (2023). A thumbnail history of admission by lottery in Dutch medicine studies. Translated from the original Dutch by Lambert Schuwirth. blog

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August, 2024 \ contact ben at at at benwilbrink.nl    

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      http://www.benwilbrink.nl/projecten/lottery.htm http://goo.gl/MQmvN