Merit or quota? Indians, get your priorities right

 

From V Ganabatirau

University students had raised a couple of questions related to the quota system during a dialogue session with Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim recently.

Anwar had answered the question based on the real situation on the ground and despite the sensitive nature of the issue.

When we ask for the abolition of the quota system and promote meritocracy, we are touching on the fundamental issue of our social contract.

The moment the government moves away from the quota system to implement the meritocracy system, the Malays will be angered and this might lead to destabilisation of the current government at all levels and cause the government of the day to collapse.

Then, the PAS-led Perikatan Nasional government could form the government and things will go worse than expected.

They are not going to abolish the quota system either. If they could, they would have done it when they were part of the government in 2020.

Therefore, I urge everyone to look at the bigger picture of our future endeavours rather than harping on this sensitive issue, especially during this election period.

I request everyone not to focus too much on the abolition of the quota system but to fight to increase the quota for non-Malays, especially Indian students in the education sector.

We should fight for the rights of Indian students who scored well in the public examination to allow them to enter public universities to do the courses of their choice. Think practically.

We should not only fight to increase the number of matriculation seats. The matriculation seats are meaningless if we cannot secure seats in the universities for those who have scored well in the matriculation, STPM, foundation studies or diplomas.

The ultimate aim is to increase the quota for non-Malays in the universities without compromising the Malay quota.

We should ask for the share that belongs to Indians. As we are aware, students who scored well in SPM couldn’t enter universities; only one or two universities were allowed to do so.

The rest of the universities only accepted matriculation, STPM, foundation studies results or diplomas as their entry qualification.

So, a good score in SPM doesn’t give you automatic access to the universities. The majority of the students need to undergo STPM, A-Levels, matriculation, foundation studies or obtain diplomas for this purpose.

This means that the students have multiple channels to enter into universities compared to matriculation alone.

I will encourage more Indian students to do STPM compared with A-Level, foundation or matriculation.

Our STPM is world-recognised compared with matriculation.

The education ministry has now allowed the principals to decide which students can study STPM.

STPM is accessible to everyone and it is free, with quality teachers. Hence, we should promote STPM among students as their entry qualification to universities.

Use this opportunity available rather than fighting for unrealistic things such as increasing the number of matriculation seats. On the matriculation seat issue, what we have is good enough compared to not having it at all.

Even if we increase the number of seats for matriculation, they still have to compete to enter into universities to study the course of their choice.

Yes, you heard me right. They still have to compete with the students having good STPM results and diploma students.

As such, our focus should be on the seats to do medicine, law, engineering, teaching or science degrees because the number of students waiting to enter universities is big compared to the number of seats allocated for each course.

The number of seats for these courses should be increased to cater for the students coming from various entry-level courses.

Students must be allowed to pursue their preferred courses rather than pushing them to do courses they have no interest in and which may not benefit them in the long run. - FMT

V Ganabatirau is Klang MP and an FMT reader.

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of MMKtT.