Students hoping to go to university must have an acceptable grasp of the three Rs, the Qualifications Authority says.
A recent Canterbury University report showed that first-year university students were failing basic academic skills tests. Fewer than a quarter of physics, computer science and engineering students passed a basic literacytest.
NZQA chief executive Karen van Rooyen said secondary schools had not previously had a qualifications system to track literacy levels of students.
"In the past, any student with a C pass in three bursary subjects was assumed to be sufficiently literate to have the potential to cope with a degree study programme," Ms van Rooyen said.
"The universities have been telling us that this is not the case, that an increasing number of students have been falling by the wayside. But there has been no hard data on which to act."
She said success in three subjects and a certain standard of literacy would be an explicit requirement to study at a university from next year.
Secondary schools are in the final year of implementing the National Qualifications Framework, which measures students against specific standards of literacy.
Ms van Rooyen said: "There is a range of standards on the NQF which count towards NCEA certificates and also for the award of University Entrance. Students are now specifically required to gain credits in reading and writing as well as in maths.
"If they do not achieve these credits we believe that they will be unlikely to succeed at university."
As students left secondary schools this year and moved into university, their achievements would be monitored so the NZQA knew whether the new standards proved to be a good indicator of a student's likely success or failure.
