Exhibit A: The university’s decision to use broad-based admissions (BBA) – that is to say, an application process which takes into account not just grades, but also extra-curricular activities and the contents of personal essays – for its entire student intake. This is an enormously positive step. Just as the university experience is about more than just classes, students are more than just grades. BBA recognizes that fact, and makes it the central feature of the admissions process.

Now, this isn’t an entirely revolutionary step. Many universities use some form of BBA to help decide between candidates who are at the bottom of the grade range to get in. A number also use it in particularly competitive faculties (UBC’s Sauder School has used it since 2004, SFU’s business school began last year), and of course, BBA is actually the norm at smaller, faith-based institutions.

But most big universities shy away from using it across-the-board because it’s simpler and cheaper to use grades exclusively to decide who gets in and who gets an entrance scholarship. That’s undeniably true, but there’s no faster way to turn yourself into a cookie-cutter institution than to treat your applicants in a one-or two-dimensional fashion. UBC’s initiative is a big step away from that.

Exhibit B: UBC has axed its $6 million, grade-based automatic admissions scholarships (i.e., where one-time entrance money is distributed to students simply for achieving a certain average in secondary school), and redistributing the money towards need-based bursaries, work-study and a smaller number of larger, more prestigious multi-year scholarships.

The university has correctly sussed that the awards are not in fact a major draw for the institution, and that by distributing these awards, they were spending a lot of money to no real effect (a point we at HESA made a few years ago when we were working under another corporate name). Re-directing that money towards need-based aid means money is being used for far more socially valuable purposes, and enlarging the top-end scholarships puts the institution in a much better position to compete for the very top (1-2%) in the country – which is the real target of any institution of UBC’s stature.

Too often, universities have trouble doing the right thing because in this very conservative industry it’s hard to convince people to do something if no one else is doing it. UBC, gloriously, has just erased that excuse as far as improving admissions and scholarships are concerned. May they be widely imitated.