The government should consider giving automatic acceptance for top scorers into university courses of their choice, MCA said.

These students would need a cumulative grade average point (CGPA) of 4.0 in their pre-university exams, as well a certain level of performance in their extra-curricular activities, said the party’s Selangor Youth Education Bureau chief Lawrence Low.

“(This is) a move to appreciate student talent and to relieve the issues of top scorers not being offered courses they had applied, once and for all,” he said in a statement today.

Low was commenting on Deputy Education Minister II P Kamalanathan’s (left) statement yesterday that the number of places in medical courses have reduced from 690 last year to 418 this year – a drop of 272 offers.

He also urged the Ministry of Education to release such data prior to announcing the results of the student’s enrolments.

“It should also be made known to the students on the limited availabilities of ‘hot courses’ and prepare the students to make alternative choices in view of the excess number of applications in certain courses.

“This would allow the students to have more time to prepare themselves for other options and not only wait until the results are released and realize that they are not offered the course of their choice and end up frustrated,” Low said.

Why the drop in medicine spots?

Meanwhile, in a separate statement, DAP national vice chairperson M Kula Segaran took Kamalanathan to task for not addressing two basic issues in his comment: transparency in selection criteria and the sudden reduction of student intake. 

“The government must therefore be totally transparent with intake details to convince the students that they have lost out to those who are better qualified.

“While it is necessary for the government to prevent an oversupply of doctors, any sudden or drastic reduction in intake is cruel and unfair to the students who have excelled in their examinations.

“Why has Kamalanathan kept silent on the overall drastic slash in this year’s university intake?” Kula asked.

Sin Chew Daily reported that as at August 15, a total of 68,702 students had applied for public university courses in the 2013-2014 academic year, of which 60.5 percent of applicants were accepted.
 
For the 2014-2015 academic year, there were 74,071 applications; an increase of 30 percent but only 50.5 percent of them were accepted.

Last week, STPM top scorer Ng Yi Ling was reported to have been offered a spot in a nursing course.

She had applied to study medicine, pharmacy and dentistry.