The revised policy, which was signed off unanimously on Tuesday, comes after the university was accused by student associations in 2020 of seeking to water down its "mirror on society" policy by proposing caps on the number of students admitted through priority pathways.
The university ended up apologising for the distress discussions had caused.
Its new policy is called te kauae paraoa or "whale jaw", and supplants the previous recruitment plan.
Its purpose and its details remain much the same as its predecessor.
Vice-chancellor Prof David Murdoch said mirror on society had been reviewed and renamed, and changes made.
“We hope students from a range of backgrounds will be assisted,” he said.
References to affirmative action have been removed and explicit mention was made about the necessity of all applicants to the health sciences programme meeting academic thresholds and standards.
“The revised admissions strategy is meant for groups that have felt excluded or whose path has been too difficult in the past,” Prof Murdoch said.
Adopted in 2012, mirror on society was designed to create a health workforce that would better reflect the ethnic composition of New Zealand.
It was to do this by promoting the selection of such underrepresented demographics as Maori, Pacific and rural people through affirmative pathways into medicine, dentistry, physiotherapy, and pharmacy, and medical laboratory science.
Maori compose 3.4% and Pasifika 1.8% of the medical workforce, even though the former make up 15% and the latter 8% of New Zealand’s population. The policy was meant to address such historical underrepresentation.
Mirror on society led to debate in 2020 about the extent to which students from minority groups were receiving priority over equally or more deserving students to enter the University of Otago’s Medical School.
A legal challenge about priority pathways resulted in discussion about the policy’s future.
At a university council meeting last year, the council accepted recommendations of the mirror on society working group and consultation was initiated.
One of the key questions was how its policies could be balanced with all admission pathways.
A new provision includes people with disabilities as a priority group in te kauae paraoa.
University of Otago disability information and support manager Melissa Lethaby will organise a working party to consider inclusion of a disability policy.
Te kauae paraoa will be reviewed in three years.
