DAP says meritocracy system for university intake not fair

The DAP wants the recently formed National Unity Consultative Council to propose bold changes to Putrajaya to rectify current meritocracy based university intake.

Its national vice-chairman M.Kula Segaran (pic) said the present system was flawed, unfair and unprofessional. He said the system failed due to unfairness and lack of transparency.

"Unfortunately, till today the government has not addressed these two issues," he said in a statement today

Putrajaya recently announced the setting up the council and has been given six months to come up with proposals to strengthen national unity.

Kula Segaran, who is also Ipoh Barat MP, said the absence of a common university entrance examination had made the meritocracy intake system introduced since 2003 to be unfair.

"Unfair public university intake is not only a cause of brain drain, but also has an impact on national unity," he said.

Kula Segaran said this in response to a statement by MIC President Datuk G. Palanivel who had requested Putrajaya to revert to the quota system in the intake for public universities.

Palanivel said the meritocracy system had failed and the total number of Indian university students was now 1,742 out of a total of 51,673 students in public universities, less than 2% of the total.

In July this year, amid public outcry that top scorers had failed to gain admission into public universities, former deputy education minister Datuk Wee Ka Siong had described the meritocracy as “more quota than the quota system”.

He revealed that successful Chinese applicants were the lowest for the 2013/14 academic session, comprising only 7,913 students or 19% from a total of 41,573 applicants.

Wee said that since the implementation of the meritocracy policy, the percentage of successful Chinese applicants had never gone above 20%.

Wee also revealed that the intake of Chinese students for eight major courses in public universities – medical, dentistry, pharmacy, electronics and electrical engineering, chemical engineering, law and accounting – had been declining in recent years from 26.2% in 2001 to 25.3% in 2012 and 20.7 % this year.

Under the racial quota intake system that was in force from 1979 to 2002, the intake formula was in the ratio of 55:45 for bumiputra and non-bumiputra students