Top scorers cannot become doctors

Top students offered nursing courses instead of medical degrees.

GEORGE TOWN: The DAP has urged the Cabinet to immediately address issues of top scorers being denied their preferred courses and the unfairness of sudden and drastic decrease in university intakes.

Its national vice-chairman M.Kulasegaran argued that huge decrease in intake had denied many qualified students their university places.

“Is this a fair and right policy for Malaysia which aspires to be a developed nation by 2020?” asked the DAP leader, who is also the Ipoh Barat MP, in a statement here today.

He said some top students have openly claimed that they were offered nursing instead of medical studies.

He claimed that a science stream student from Selama with of 3.5 CGPA result was offered an arts course to study human resources management.

“Apparently this form of mismatch is numerous.”

“A science student being given an arts course.”

“Hence many declined these courses,” clarified Kulasegaran.

Although top scorers being denied their preferred courses was not new, he said there had been past allegations of lack of a level playing fields for non-bumiputra students.

He said the government must be totally transparent with intake details to convince the students that they had lost out to those who were better qualified.

After a few top scorers publicly complained of their failure to obtain medical programmes, Deputy Education Minister P.Kamalanathan explained that the government had offered places to only 418 brilliant students to take up medical studies (first degree) at public institutions of higher learning for this year’s intake.

A total 1,163 students with a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 4.00 applied to do medicine.

Kamalanathan said the limited number of offers was meant to control the number of new medical graduates and avoid a flood of new doctors in the employment market.

Kamalanathan claimed that the decision was made after discussions with the Health Ministry and the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC).

But Kulasegaran dismissed Kamalanathan’s explanation as unsatisfactory as it failed to address the basic issues of transparency of the selection criteria and the unfairness of sudden reduced intake.

While it was necessary for the government to prevent an oversupply of doctors, he argued that any sudden drastic reduction in intake was cruel and unfair to students who excelled in examinations.

According to media reports, he said that some 60.5% of the 68,702 applicants were accepted for public university spots for the 2013-2014 academic year, while only 50.5% of the 74,071 applicants were accepted for the 2014-2015 period.

“Let me ask Kamalanathan to find out from the Cabinet Ministers on whether they will be heartbroken if their children were the top scorers, who had applied for medicine but were given nursing course.”

“Secondly, will they advise their children to accept the nursing programmes offered?” asked Kulasegaran.”