I think it's great that we are finally having this long overdue discussion on meritocractic university admission, the ifs, whens and hows.

The irony, of course, has always been that the mechanism to close the general gap between the bumiputras and the Chinese is to "bleed out" the Chinese.

So instead of raising the competitive level of the bumiputras, they lowered the level of the Chinese who are admitted into local universities (and please if I am going to be flamed for painting a broad brush and slapped with an anecdote of how there is a brilliant Chinese or Indian in a local university, don't bother because it's exactly just that - anecdotal).

The ones who couldn't get a spot in a local university because their results were (too) good were forced to look elsewhere - Singapore, Australia, US, etc. This evaporative effect basically chills the whole local competitive environment and the drive to better oneself gets slow and viscous.

But that's not my point. My concern in this whole meritocracy discussion is that a crucial piece is not being articulated. This is the inertial effect of university deans and administrators whom I believe will continue to grease the wheels. I am sure there will always be special cases, but when it comes to a 180-degree turn, I am afraid old habits will be hard to break.

Will they follow government guidelines? Again, admission to higher centres of learning are not always black and white; there are checks and balances between academic performance and extra-curricular involvement. Both sum up to represent a candidate's merit. The problem is that one of these is hard to quantify.

So while the intention of turning the system meritocractic (it even sounds weird saying this) is truly admirable at best, the devil unfortunately is in the details of implementation, down to the granularity of how you'd change the way admission officers do their job.

Without, sufficient specific guidelines on the spirit, not letter, of the change down to the personnel level, my belief is that the motion will neither fail nor succeed. It'll just be another zombie bill that's passed to make us all feel warm and fuzzy inside.

Let's hope I am wrong.