(Petaling Jaya, Tuesday): Many questions have been raised and
remained unanswered in the wake of the public furore over the
public university student intake for the 2002/2003 academic year and the
unfair and unprofessional merit-based university selection system.
After the public university intake of
32,752 was announced on 9th May 2002, comprising 22,557 bumiputras
(68.9%), 8,665 Chinese (26.4%) and 1,530 Indians (4.7%), MIC President, Datuk
Seri S. Samy Vellu said that his worst fears about meritocracy had come true
with the drastic drop of nearly three per cent to 4.7 per cent this year.
He said
the Indians have been caught in the “meritocracy trap” saying that it
was clear that the Indians could not compete on an equal footing with others due
to historical reasons which had to be rectified before meritocracy could be
applied to them.
What Samy Vellu said was in fact an
indictment of his 23-year leadership as MIC President as Malaysian Indians, who
had held their place in economic and educational fields in the country in the
early decades after Independence sometimes well beyond their numbers, have
deterioriated in their status in the nation to become the new underclass to the
extent that MIC is talking about a “meritocracy trap” for Indians and asking
for the restoration of the quota system for university admissions.
Although this is a separate issue, it
raises the important question whether Samy Vellu is right that the Indian
students are caught in a “meritocracy trap” resulting in their having only
4.7% of the public university intake this year, and that only by reverting to
the quota system of the past three decades of 55:35:10 for bumiputra, Chinese
and Indian students respectively could the Indian students be assured of fair
and just allocation of higher education opportunities in the public
universities.
The government is very secretive about
releasing facts and figures, but we can make a very intelligent guess from
various official data and admissions to draw two conclusions: firstly, that the
Indian student university intake had never reached 10% in accordance with the
university quota for Indians during the 23 years when Samy Vellu was MIC
President and Cabinet Minister and secondly, that this is not the first time in
the past 23 years that the Indian
student intake had fallen below 5% and that there had been years when it had
fallen even lower than the 4.7% this year.
In the past 23 years, the 55:35:10
university quota for bumiputra, Chinese and Indian students had never been
adhered to as illustrated from the following statistics for first-degree
enrolment in the local public universities, collated from the first and second
National Economic Consultative Council (NECC) reports:
First
Degree Enrolment in Local Universities
Bumiputra
Non-Bumiputra
Total
1980
13,610 8,334
21,944
(62%)
(38%)
(100%)
1985
23,841 13,997
37,838
(63%)
(37%)
(100%)
1988
30,085 19,705
49,790
(60.4%) (39.6%)
(100%)
1990
35,361 18,309
53,670
(65.9%) (34.1%)
(100%)
1999
97,836 42,084
139,920
(69.9%) (30.1%)
(100%)
(Source:
NECC I & NECC II Reports)
In the past few days, Samy had admitted
that the racial breakdown of public university intake last year was bumiputras
64.5%, Chinese 27.5% and Indians 7.8%., with a negligible percentage going to
others.
In the years when the bumiputra student
percentage was nearly 70%, as in 1999 when it was 69.9%, the Indian percentage
could be as low or lower than 4.7%.
If this was the case, then the problem of the low percentage of Indian
student intake into the universities is not so much because of the
“meritocracy trap” as the “political trap”.
Can Samy Vellu ask the Cabinet to
release the full details of the racial intake percentages for all the years
since the introduction of the 55:35:10 quota system
to show the extent of their deviation?
Another question is whether Indians
will lose out in a meritocracy system and must find protection in a quota
system.
I believe if there is a fair and
professional matching of the matriculation grades and STPM results, and not at
present like comparing an apple with an orange, more eligible Indian applicants
would have the opportunity to be offered university places this year.
The 40-NGO Group of Concerned Citizens
have rightly pointed out that the problem with the low Indian student intake is
not with meritocracy but the flaws of an unfair and unprofessional meritocracy
system, and the necessity for a “needs” element to take into account
socio-economic considerations of the disadvantaged groups to ensure social
justice.
There are many other questions, but the
most immediate and pressing concern is that the Cabinet tomorrow should take the
policy decision to expand university places for the 31,572 students, comprising
24,321 bumiputras, 4,820 Chinese and 2,431 Indians with the minimum university
entry qualifications.
The Cabinet tomorrow must be mindful
that in approaching the problem of public university intake, the overriding
consideration is that Malaysians must be able to compete with the rest of the
world in the era of globablisation to establish Malaysia’s international
competitiveness and not competing among ourselves or among the races, and for
this reason, the problem must not be seen as a zero sum game as to which race
wins but a win-win game for all Malaysians regardless of race and the nation
together to win.
If the Cabinet does not take any action
tomorrow to expand places for the 31,572 ‘rejects’, then their hopes for
entry into the public universities will be doomed – which will be a loss to
them as well as to the nation.
(21/5/2002)