Wee: UM, MOHE sidestepping locals' concerns on uni admissions

Summary

• MCA president Wee Ka Siong criticises UM vice-chancellor Noor Azuan Abu Osman and the Higher Education Ministry for focusing on internationalisation and rankings while ignoring the shrinking opportunities for local students.

• He urges UM and MOHE to disclose annual admission data from 2018 to 2025, saying many deserving students are being pushed into expensive direct intake programmes as subsidised UPU slots are restricted.

• He cites examples such as UM’s accounting and law programmes to argue that public universities are commercialising admissions, and calls on the government to mandate transparency and stop the practice.

MCA president Wee Ka Siong accused Universiti Malaya vice-chancellor Noor Azuan Abu Osman of sidestepping the concerns of Malaysians over public university admissions.

In a statement today, he criticised Noor Azuan and the Higher Education Ministry (MOHE) for still presenting the matter as being about internationalisation and how foreign students help improve rankings and research visibility.

“This argument completely evades the central and most important issue, which is the steady erosion of opportunities for local students through the expansion of full-paying places at the expense of subsidised public university admissions system (UPU) slots.

“The vice-chancellor relied on broad generalisations but failed to disclose critical data,” Wee said.

Earlier today, Bernama reported Noor Azuan saying Malaysia is not the only country balancing education for locals against including international students.

“Universities worldwide aspire to global excellence, of which the indicators are often measured by international rankings and visibility, which come from engaging top minds that transcend borders.

“At the same time, public universities have always been mandated to serve their own people, indicating the priorities needed to serve national purposes,” he said.

Noor Azuan affirmed UM’s commitment to quotas for local students, pointing to the government’s policy that the intake of international students will not come at the cost of deserving locals.

Release the data

Commenting further, Wee repeated his call for UM and MOHE to release detailed admission data from 2018 to 2025, breaking down the numbers of full-paying and subsidised local students by qualification.

“Only then can Malaysians see the truth, that thousands of deserving students are being forced into commercial ‘direct intake’ programmes.

“This is not a matter of foreign students displacing locals but of local UPU places being ‘stolen’ and sold to Malaysians themselves at unaffordable rates,” he said.

He claimed that top scorers from B40 and M40 families were being forced into commercial “direct intake” programmes with medical degrees costing up to RM500,000.

As an example, he pointed to UM’s Bachelor of Accounting programme, where MOHE confirmed only 85 UPU places were offered, while faculty records show about 160 graduates annually.

“This means almost 47 percent of intake is channelled through commercial ‘direct intake’ routes, even if some of them are Malaysians.

“The issue here is clear as subsidised UPU seats are being restricted while public universities expand their commercial channels to full-paying students,” he added.

He also called the claim that all 1,255 STPM students with perfect 4.0 cumulative grade point averages (CGPAs) secured public university spots “misleading”.

This is because getting a place in a public university is not the same as being offered the student’s course of choice, he explained, adding that the matter should be a non-issue considering the number of full-paying slots available for locals and foreigners.

Fee difference of 10-30 times

Besides that, Wee touched on UM’s Mega Open Day last week, where nearly 75 slots for its law degree programme were offered under the university’s “Satu” direct intake channel.

He said the fees under the alternative pathway are 10 times the subsidised fees.

“This reflects a similar reality for other critical courses in UM, where the difference in fees between subsidised UPU intake vs Satu channel ranges from 10 to 30 times,” he added.

Wee said the government must guarantee transparency in university admissions by requiring public disclosure of intake figures for subsidised and full-paying local students, and by putting a stop to public universities turning their national mandate into a commercial exercise.

On Sept 17, MOHE denied claims that it failed to prioritise the admission of local students into local higher education institutions.

This was after Edward Wong, who scored a 4.0 CGPA in the STPM examination, expressed disappointment after six universities rejected his applications to join their accounting course.

Instead, he was offered a management course, which Wong said was only his fifth choice, describing it as “neither my passion, nor my dream, nor the reward for my two years of struggle”.

He shared his story on Facebook, prompting Wee to hold a press conference on the matter.

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