Public universities are top choice, if UPU allows it

ECHOING the letter “Public universities are still the top choice” published in The Star on Jan 17 last year, I completely agree that for most parents (and students), public university education is still the top choice.

The more pertinent question is whether all suitably qualified Malaysians are able equally to apply to enrol in our top public universities or is this a privilege reserved for those with specific pre-university qualifications? Does our rigid UPU system for public university applications facilitate the Malaysian brain drain? This may be a surprise to some, but there are young Malaysians who want to remain in Malaysia, who want to study in the hallowed halls of our public universities, but are not given the opportunity to do so right from the application stage.

I am one of those people. After completing the SPM, I was offered the opportunity to pursue a International Baccalaureate (IB) diploma at an international school in Malaysia on a full scholarship. I grabbed the opportunity as I preferred a broad-based education, less exam-focused and more ongoing based evaluations, which did not limit my options for further study. However, I failed to realise the problems I would face when I started my university application process.

Although I sent off applications to overseas universities in countries such as the United Kingdom and Canada, my dream was to attend a Malaysian public university (IPTA). It was a dream built from generations of my family attending IPTAs, from looking at university standings worldwide and realising I had some of the best universities in my own country. What excited me even more was the acceptance our IPTAs showed towards IB students. Most of their websites stated IB requirements, alongside STPM and A-Levels. That, and of course the fact that coming from a middle-income family, IPTAs are the most cost-effective education options that also fulfilled my personal requirements of university standards and recognition.

When the UPU portal for 2018/2019 opened, I logged in, eager to submit an application. Alas, I was struck with a myriad of difficulties. Phone calls to UPU left me without answers. I was told to submit an incomplete application, leave half the fields blank and click submit. Conversely, face-to-face meetings with IPTA representatives illustrated universities that were eager to accept IB students who were Malaysian and had taken the SPM. But my application would never reach them, due to the fact that an IB student has to submit an incomplete application to universities in her own country.

Below are just a few examples of the hurdles an IB student has to face when applying via UPU to IPTAs.

> Subject choices

The IB Diploma offers a grand total of 25 subjects, not including each language option which offers around 55 choices for students, whilst being open to special requests from each candidate. Schools, on the other hand, are able to pick subjects that they can offer, which narrows down the subject choices.

With such a wide range of subject choices, other application portals such as The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS), for British universities, offer each applicant the chance to manually key in their subject names. UPU chooses, however, to have a drop-down menu of only 20 subjects. This drop-down menu fails to include any language option and also neglects all the other potential subject choices that a student has chosen to do. As language is a compulsory part of the IB Diploma, applicants who have taken the IB are forced to leave this section incomplete and carry on with the rest of the application.

> Subject levels

Another key component of the IB Diploma is the level each subject is taken at. Currently, the diploma offers taking a subject at either “Higher Level” or “Standard Level”. Subjects at each level differ in scope, with students who take subjects at “Higher Level” expected to obtain a greater body of knowledge, understanding and skills throughout the course of the diploma. These levels are significant as they indicate the areas of study a student is interested in and whether this correlates with his/her undergraduate programme choice.

For most courses, universities usually state what subjects they would require, and at which level. At Universiti Malaya for example, the entry requirements for medicine for those with an IB Diploma is a score of at least 36 points and at least a grade six at Higher Level in two subjects and a grade six at Standard Level in one subject with a combination of Biology, Chemistry, Physics/Mathematics.

However, UPU does not provide a space to key in which level each subject was taken at and does not even allow for this to be manually keyed in. If a student cannot identify for a university which level a subject was taken at, how can the university analyse their application competitively, alongside other applicants?

> Grade boundaries

A student’s IB diploma final score is an accumulated score from each subject. Each subject is graded on a seven to one scale, with seven being the highest potential grade a student can achieve. Students can also be awarded an additional three points from two additional core components, the Extended Essay and Theory of Knowledge. This scoring system enables students to obtain a maximum total of 45 points from their IB diploma.

University eligibility, for IB students, is highly dependent on the number of points the student obtains. And while IPTAs have listed their entry requirements, UPU ignores them and provides their own grade boundary for students to fill. The UPU grade boundary is as follows, “Excellent, Very Good, Good, Satisfactory, Mediocre, Poor, Very Poor, No Grade”. IB students are left dumbfounded when trying to apply for IPTAs as there is no correlation between the grade boundaries that they have obtained and what UPU requires them to fill up.

If UPU is not going to fix these issues, I urge our IPTAs to urgently come up with alternative options. It is unfair to us as Malaysian students if your website states that you will accept students from a variety of backgrounds, but these students are treated as if their qualification is worth nothing in their own country. It may be too late now but as a student who is proud to be Malaysian, and who does not aim to contribute to our nation’s brain drain, I hope that changes will be made to the application system in future. A DISAPPOINTED MALAYSIAN STUDENT Petaling Jaya

Phone calls to UPU left me without answers. I was told to submit an incomplete application, leave half the fields blank and click submit.