Numerus Clausus

Numerus clausus, Latin for closed number, is a method of restricting the number of students admitted to a university or degree program, typically used to keep enrollment in a particularly sought-after field at a level matched to the workforce that field can absorb, while limiting competition for places. In the 20th century the mechanism was also used across a number of countries, including Austria, Hungary, Poland, the United States, and Canada, as a discriminatory quota aimed specifically at Jewish applicants; Hungary's 1920 numerus clausus law, for example, cut Jewish university enrollment from about 15 percent to roughly 6 percent, and at Harvard the share of Jewish students fell from about 28 percent to 17 percent between the late 1910s and the mid-1930s. Today the mechanism is used for non-discriminatory practical purposes in continental European countries facing high demand for places in competitive fields: Germany, Finland, France, and Switzerland currently apply numerus clausus systems to fields such as medicine, dentistry, and law, selecting by academic achievement rather than by group identity. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/