‘No’ to varsity change

‘No’ to varsity change
http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/6/29/nation/18163106&sec=nation

NILAI: The Higher Education Ministry will not entertain appeals from students who want to change their university.

“We will only consider appeals from those who did not obtain a place or were offered courses which they had not listed in their application form,” minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said.

He added that students could not change the course they were given if it was among the eight choices listed in the form.

Clearly, the minister does not want to admit that the current system of centralized university placement is flawed. How can a top STPM scorer be denied his first choice, instead is delegated to his fourth or fifth choice? Surely the minister is aware that the reason why those choices are filled up is because of fear that the applicant may not be granted any university place at all if the first or second choices were denied!

Of the 68,110 applications for degree programmes offered by local public universities for the 2007/ 2008 academic year, only 40,116 students obtained places.

Does that mean that there are now 28,000 more places for degree programmes offered by local public universities? Care to elaborate if these places are among the first or second choices of the applicants? Mr. Minister?

Mustapa clarified that not all the applications met the minimum qualification of Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 2.0.

“We will consider appeals from those who qualify (but did not get a place),” he said...

In the first place, there should not be any case where anybody "qualify but did not get a place". This shows the inadequacy and inefficiency of the centralized Higher Education Ministry.

BLA BLA BLA!