Reform needed: Tang (second from right) handing over the document to Higher Education Ministry senior assistant public relations officer Dayang Norakma Shaharuddin. Looking on are (from left) Koo Wei Ling and Wong Pynven. — RAJA FAISAL HISHAN/The Star
PUTRAJAYA: The Higher Education Ministry must break down university admission quotas by entry pathways and release detailed data to ensure fairness and transparency in the UPU (University Admissions Unit) system, says the University Malaya Association of New Youth (Umany).
Its president Tang Yi Ze said transparency is crucial to restoring public trust.
“The first thing is to publicise the data and how the ranking system works, then publicise all the courses from every public university, especially ‘hot’ courses like accounting, medicine and law.
“They must also disclose the quota for local students and, within that quota, what the ratio is for Sijil Tinggi Persekolahan Malaysia (STPM), matriculation, foundation, A-level and diploma students,” he said after handing over a complaint document to ministry officials yesterday.
The student group also called for matriculation and STPM to be treated equally.
Tang argued that the matriculation programme places students in the same talent pool as STPM candidates despite having different academic and co-curricular standards.
“To ensure fairness and transparency, we ask the ministry to raise the matriculation standard to match STPM, which is more recognised by international standards.”
Tang also said Umany had documented 37 complaints.
Many of the complaints received were about the difficulty STPM students face in securing co-curricular marks, which weigh heavily in UPU admissions decisions, he said.
“For example, each state has only one matriculation college. To get a national ranking, a student from a matriculation college only needs to participate or compete in any competition or activities held by the college itself.
“But STPM students must take part in activities involving at least five schools from different regions, making it much harder for them to obtain co-curricular marks,” he said adding that the complaint document highlights concerns over the government’s auto-admission policy, under which students who score 10As and above in the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examinations are granted a place in the matriculation programme.
While the policy seems positive at first, he said it had caused overcrowding, leaving many high-achieving matriculation students without places in their preferred public universities.
“Half of the complaints that we received are from matriculation students,” he said, questioning how the policy could succeed without a corresponding increase in university quotas.
On Universiti Malaya’s (UM) foundation programme, Tang highlighted the rejection of top scorers from UPU placements despite assurances that they would be prioritised through the direct intake channel.
“This policy only highlights the deeper issue – that UM has reserved a portion of seats for direct local admissions, thereby reducing the available quota under UPU.”
The handover followed the case of STPM student Edward Wong Yi Xian, who achieved a perfect CGPA of 4.0 and a near-perfect 99.9% overall merit score but claimed he was rejected by UM for an accounting course.
He raised his grievances with MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Wee Ka Siong after all six of his applications to public universities via UPU – including UM, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Universiti Putra Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) – were rejected without an interview. He was instead offered a place in a management course at USM, his fifth choice.
UM vice-chancellor Prof Datuk Seri Dr Noor Azuan Abu Osman said in a response last night that Umany’s statement does not reflect the official position of UM.
He said the university had always upheld freedom of speech among members of the campus community, in line with the spirit of openness and intellectualism that forms the foundation of any institution of higher learning.
“Nevertheless, this freedom must be accompanied by a sense of responsibility and due consideration of the sensitivities and implications of the statements made, particularly those involving public policies.”
He said the national matriculation system is a comprehensive education system that has been proven to play a role in providing access to higher education for students from diverse backgrounds.
“It is part of the government’s continuous efforts to ensure more inclusive and equitable educational opportunities for all.”
Meanwhile, former USM professor Datuk Omar Shawkataly stressed that to be fair, there should only be one pre-university system in the country – STPM.
He said the matriculation programmes should be handed back to the respective public universities as they were originally.
“Having two pre-university systems has now grown into a larger problem,” he said.
