The STPM is tougher than any local matriculation examination, and any attempt to equate the two is a sneaky attempt to compare apples and oranges. Actually it is more like two different races - o­ne a marathon and the other a shorter 10, 000 metre race - and comparing the finishing times of both races is ludicrous.

And if any minister were to argue otherwise, I would throw in this wager: Take the top matriculation centre and any top STPM school and get them to take each other's examination. Then we can use the parity mechanism adopted by the Ministry of Education to standardise the evaluation of the merit of the respective students.

The STPM students would clear the floor, over the Matriculation students.

Look, it is living hell for a typical Chinese student with no family fortune, and yet wants to do maybe law or medicine in Malaysian public universities. (In the case of law, they are limited to either to Universiti Malaya or the International Islamic University since UKM and UiTM bars non-bumiputeras)

That is why most non-bumiputera families who are confident of privately funding their children, take them out of the public education after SPM and place them into the private system.

It is time to scrap the matriculation system. Let everyone take the STPM, and let the results of that exam became the sole criteria for the entry into local public universities. Circumstances like low income bracket families and ethnicity can be adopted as an additional criteria, but not as the norm.

For instance, we can ensure 10 percent of places within the medical faculty be put aside as affirmative action seats. These students who cannot meet regular requirements can get into university o­n that basis, but as minority students in the programme. The placement of students who do not meet academic standards cannot be done at the expense of deserving students, as is the case in Malaysia right now.

With many of our finest minds leaving the country to places where they are more appreciated, this question lies at the doorstep of the incoming prime minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

Are you merely doing the cosmetic bit to education and claim the untruth as you have right now, or would you be willing to offer the kind of education that can develop fine individuals for our nation's future?