PETALING JAYA: Top scorers who fail to get into popular courses in public universities should be offered places in private institutions on scholarships provided by the Government, said MCA president Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek.
Dr Chua said MCA understood that there had been a high demand for popular courses such as medicine and pharmacy, and that the public universities would not be able to accept all the top scorers due to limited places.
“In such cases, the deserving students should be offered places in private universities via scholarships provided by the Government.
“Since the Government has stopped awarding scholarships to SPM graduates unless they are accepted into reputable universities, it now has the means to provide these to students who obtained a cumulative grade point average (CGPA) of 4.0 in their STPM examination,” he said in a statement here yesterday.
“Each deserving student must be assured of a place in university and they should not be turned away unless they do not have the required entry points,” he added.
Dr Chua was commenting on the hundreds of students - including 55 with perfect CGPA of 4.0 - who had not gained places to study medicine and other courses of their choice in public universities.
He also urged the Government to admit all top scorers with a 4.0 CGPA into public universities without further delay as they had rightly obtained the perfect cumulative grade point average.
This was in line with the country’s agenda of grooming local talent to cater to its development and vision to become a high-income nation by 2020, he pointed out.
“MCA stands firm that the Government should provide tertiary education to all students based on meritocracy. I would like to remind students with CGPA of 4.0 that they could also opt for other courses of their choice and not merely popular ones like medicine and pharmacy,” he said.
Dr Chua said that he had also conveyed this issue and the students’ grievances to the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister for further action.
Meanwhile, another 33 STPM top scorers, who met with problems in their applications to enter public universities, have also asked MCA for help after the party highlighted some 108 appeal cases on Tues-day.
Its Youth chief Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong said that they were the latest batch, adding that he expected more to come.
Pointing out that most of the 88 top scorers had opted to study medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and engineering, he said he would “analyse on case by case basis and see how to help them.”
To date, Dr Wee said 14 of the cases did not get any offers, 12 were given courses which were way off from their choices while the rest did not get what they wanted.
He said that there was also a very small number with what he described as an “unreasonable request”, such as wanting to do medicine in Universiti Malaya despite being offered places in Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia.
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