‘World-class’ bid may have caused admissions fiasco

By Yojana Sharma and Emilia Tan. Malaysia’s bid for world-class university status and the channelling of government funds into research and postgraduate studies at several public universities may have caused this year’s fiasco in which a large number of non-Malay ethnic minority students failed to get into undergraduate courses of their choice despite scoring top marks in school-leaving exams.
Wee Ka Siong, education bureau chief of the Malaysian Chinese Association, or MCA, told local media recently: “I believe this could be one of the reasons why many top scorers failed to get into universities or the courses of their choice.”
In July the allocation of seats at public universities sparked an uproar after ethnic Chinese and Indian students failed to get onto preferred university courses – particularly in medicine and dentistry – despite achieving higher results in school-leaving exams than some Malay students. More...