Edward Wong Case Reveals Distrust In Varsity Admission System Says Rafizi

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The former economy minister says ending the admission of matriculation students into public universities would not resolve the issue.
Pandan MP Rafizi Ramli said the government is unable to provide all the money needed to accept every qualified student, so universities have to set up the SATU stream that charges higher tuition fees to fund itself.PETALING JAYA: The recent discussions over Edward Wong’s rejection by Universiti Malaya reveal the distrust among non-Malays in the public university admission system, says former economy minister Rafizi Ramli
“When something like this happens, people only want an easy answer. They choose either to support or not support Wong. Malays are telling Wong that there are brighter students, while the Chinese and Indians are decrying discrimination,” he said in his podcast Yang Berhenti Menteri last night.
He said ending the admission of matriculation students into public universities would not resolve the issue.
“It is very important to have transparency in the system. If there are over 1,000 applicants who have perfect scores, what’s the criteria for selecting the 85 students?” he said, referring to the number of students accepted into UM’s accountancy course that Wong had applied for.
Wong’s case gained public attention after MCA president Wee Ka Siong raised it at a press conference where he called the centralised Unit Pusat Universiti (UPU) admission process as “flawed” and “unfair”.
Yesterday, a student body had called for the abolition of the matriculation system and for university admissions to be based solely on the STPM higher school certificate.
However, Rafizi argued that the practice of accepting students with various qualifications into public universities is common in many countries.
He suggested that universities restructure their programmes according to the demands of the market by trimming down courses that are unpopular in the job market and increase available seats in those that are highly sought after.
Rafizi, who is the Pandan MP, also noted that there was a need to examine the merit “bell curve” among the applicants to further identify talents who stood out the most to ensure a fairer admission process.
The higher education department has said that only 85 places for accountancy were available in Wong’s top choice university this year, and that Wong, who achieved a perfect 4.0 CGPA and scored 99.9% for co-curricular activities, was ranked 1,129th among 2,291 eligible applicants for UM.
Rafizi said a bigger problem at play is the financial sustainability of public universities.
He said the government was unable to provide all the money needed to accept every qualified student, hence universities had to fund themselves by setting up the SATU stream that charges higher tuition fees. - FMT

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