Varsity intake - pointless to cry over spilt milk

FREE YOURSAY ‘How long has Wee been a key member of MCA? Was he not the deputy education minister in the last couple of years?’ 

Wee: Varsity intake system 'more quota than quota'

Pemerhati: The problem of shortage of places in universities for high achieving non-Malays is entirely due to Umno’s desire to produce a large number of Malay graduates to impress the Malays and get their votes.

Hence many of the places are given to low quality Malay students and wasted. This was dramatically illustrated when a principled lecturer passed only four of the 147 law students at University Sains Islam Malaysia and consequently got sacked. 

Out of fear, most lecturers pass these low quality students. But this is doing great harm to the country and the Malays as most people know this and thus view all Malay graduates with suspicion, which is unfair to the many high calibre Malays. 

The graduates mostly end up in the public service and become useless teachers, doctors, etc. and the majority of Malays and others suffer from their lousy service. All this would not happen if all students sat for a single university entrance examination and only those getting the highest marks/grades were selected.

Some of the Umno ministers and their BTN (Biro Tatanegara) indoctrinated public servants are incorrigible liars. We have seen how the Elections Commission officials help Umno to commit fraud and win elections and tell all sorts of blatant lies. 

The education officials are no different as they have also been blatantly lying about using meritocracy for university entrance for a very long time. They have devised an easy non-standardised Matrikulasi examination which is mostly taken by the Malays, and equated it to the very much tougher STPM examination which is mostly taken by the non-Malays. 

They then juggle with the marks and grades (just like the EC officials who unfairly gerrymander the constituencies) according to the pre-planned number of places they have allocated and announce the results. 

True meritocracy for university entrance was practiced for some time after independence but after Dr Mahathir Mohamad, the fraudulent system of entry to universities was set in place.

Awakened: This problem happened way back in 1977 where I was also a victim. At that time, UPU (Unit Pusat Universiti) had five public universities and there were a total of 20,000 applicants and only 6,000 were accepted. 

There was no STPM then but HSC where both bumi and non-bumi took the same exams. I remembered non-bumi with a BBBC was rejected but my classmate who was a bumi with one D was offered a medical course.

The bumi to non-bumi ratio for the intake was 76:34, although the ratio for total population for bumi vs non-bumi was 55:45. 

MCA under Lee San Choon made a big hoo ha in the cabinet and threatened to pull out all the eight MCA ministers. Finally, the cabinet decided to increase the intake of non-bumi by two percent every year until the ratio reach 55:45 to reflect the actual ratio of population. 

Most of my classmates went to Britain, Australia and New Zealand where the tuition fees was free then. As for me, son of a rubber tapper, I had no choice but to take up an off-campus course in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

Exercise Your Choice: For those who are extremely aggrieved over the very unfair system currently in place for public university admission, I suggest that you exercise your choice to join private universities.

For those who cannot afford the cost, the affected community should practice self help by setting a national-level education scholarship fund with contributions from the community.

MCA and Gerakan can redeem themselves by practising a different type of politics, ie utilise their vast assets to help by contributing generously to this national education fund. 

Leave the public universities to those favoured by the government. The market place will decide the qualities of these students. There is no point complaining year in year out. You decide your own fate.

Changeagent: Just to clarify, MCA Youth chief Wee Ka Siong, meritocracy isn't about achieving 30 percent representation of Chinese students in local public universities.

It's about ensuring that the best students who are deserving of a placement get in, regardless of race, religion or creed.

4Malaysia: Precious university seats are wasted on undeserving students. A friend of mine, who is enrolled in the Electrical Engineering faculty at Universiti Malaya, found that more than one-third of students had dropped out by the final year. 

Imagine the number of seats and opportunities wasted. Just one or two months ago, I received a list of final year students from which to select and hire (one of the major public universities). Sadly, about 40 percent of these students had CGPA of 2.5 or lower. 

And this is already considering grade inflation. Increasingly, more MNCs (multinational companies) and employers are shunning local public universities and moving their attention to the good private universities, whose standards have gradually improved in recent years.

Anonymous #40538199: "The intake of Chinese students has since then dropped to 19 percent from more than 30 percent in the early years," said Wee. 

Is it really difficult for the education minister to understand what the community wants?

CQ Muar: Who are you blaming now? For those who supported Umno-BN such as MCA, MIC, Gerakan, etc - including those wealthy Chinese - this is the reality. 

Stop crying over spilt milk. We knew what was coming, yet you chose to believe the transformation they (Umno) harped on.

Fools never learn - that's what you all are. To those super rich Chinese, such problems are insignificant so long as their businesses prosper, but it is the less fortunate (regardless of race) who will suffer the brunt of it. 

It’s time to start licking the wounds as those who reap shall sow. Trust me, more to come!

Versey: Wasn't MCA a partner in the BN party for the last few decades? How long has Wee been a key member of MCA? Was he not the deputy education minister in the last couple of years? 

Had it not the Chinese voters responded to their threat of not joining the cabinet and shamed MCA into a 7-11 (seven parliament seats, 11 state seats) party, will they wake up to this “more quota than quota” situation which people on the street already knew years ago? 

Now only they ask to be served for the morning coffee! 

Louis: Education is in the blood of Chinese. From the day he/she is born, his/her parents have been drumming into the child's ears the importance of education. Whether the parents are rich or poor, education comes first. 

Despite all this factor, how come the Chinese become less smart to the extent that they couldn't compete for those eight prestigious courses?

Swipenter: It just proves that the Chinese students cannot compete and enter public universities on their own merit. 

So the government should give special assistance, affirmative actions and allocate more places to the Chinese students to study in public universities. - Malaysiakini