JULY 25 — Admission season is in full swing for places in public universities, and the inevitable outrage over top scorers being denied entry into courses of their choice, or any courses at all, has erupted again.
Given the opaque nature of the process, conspiracy theories abound. From racial profiling to subjective interviews and from who you know to whose daughter you are, parents and candidates are expressing their disgruntlement.
On the surface, the process seems fairly straightforward. Whether through matriculation or STPM, candidates with the best scores on a decreasing scale get admitted to courses of their choices, also on a decreasing scale, so that the best students get matched with the most critical courses.
In reality, of course, the situation is very different. Are the two streams that determine the results equal in difficulty of the syllabus and in terms of entry barriers?
How is the list that determines each candidate’s relative position drawn up? Are there racial quotas applied or not?
What is the weightage given to interviews in determining overall rankings? If the first choice of a candidate is not awarded, does she go to the top of the list for her second choice, or to the bottom?
At one level, as long as the process is not transparent and the guidelines not clear, this problem will endure.
But it may be worthwhile to examine the appeal of these courses in public universities to candidates and their parents in the first place.
Given the large number of places in an extensive list of courses in private universities, combined with twinning opportunities and overseas education outright, clearly it is not an issue of availability, but cost.
Due to the steep differential in pricing, it is inevitable that the intensity of competition for the lower cost yet comparable quality option would be very high.
This is why it is strange that in this whole annual debate, the concept of applying means as an additional filter in the admission process has not merited any serious thought.
It seems fairly simple to say that if two candidates for the same seat in a critical course in a public university have the same qualifying score, the one who has less financial means should get the cheaper option.
Then if the relatively well-off candidate insists on pursuing the same course, he can opt for the private option with or without taking recourse to PTPTN, bank loans or employer bond options.
Merit-cum-means is a tried and tested filter internationally to enable win-win options for educational institutions and students alike.
In Malaysia, the problem begins because means are ignored while ethnic backgrounds are perceived as the real determinants of winners and losers in the higher education stakes.
The purpose of quotas, racial or economic, has to be to enable a level playing field for all contestants to ensure healthy competition based on merit so that the best are chosen to study courses that the nation needs.
It is no different to targeted subsidies or cash handouts to the less economically privileged. But just like the petrol subsidy that benefits those with the biggest cars, the educational subsidy for public higher educations does not discriminate between poor students who have achieved good grades despite the many obstacles in their way and their more affluent counterparts who have had more resources poured into their primary and secondary education to prepare them for tertiary education.
The situation is not helped when Pakatan Rakyat promises to make higher education entirely free for every Malaysian, because it creates mismatches between what students want to study and what industry or the country requires, it cheapens the value of merit in education as a prerequisite to success and subsidises a precious commodity indiscriminately.
Transparent processes that level the playing field so that irrespective of race or economic circumstances, the best and brightest in the country can achieve their dreams and contribute to nation building is the need of the hour. Is it so very difficult?
* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.
