(Petaling Jaya, Monday): DAP will offer free legal service to diploma students regardless of race or state to sue the Government if the Cabinet throws away the last chance on Wednesday to rectify the gross injustice of excluding diploma holders from university intake for the 2002/2003 academic session.
It is
most unfair for the Education Ministry to refuse this year
to consider the university application of some 10,000 diploma hlolders,
as diplomas have for many years
been officially recognized
as one of the legitimate university entrance qualifications.
I have with me the guidebook for university admissions for the
academic session 2002/2003 issued by the Higher Education Department of
the Education Ministry, which defined “kelayakan
lain yang di iktiraf setaraf dengannya oleh Kerajaan Malaysia” with STPM as including “(a) Diploma dari Institusi
Pendidikan Malaysia seperti dari USM, UPM, UTM, UiTM, KUiTTHO dan Politeknik”.
This is why last year, some 4,800
diploma holders were admitted into the public
universities alongside students with
STPM and matriculation qualifications.
To refuse to consider diplomas for
university admission is not to treat them as qualifications “setaraf” but
“selepas” STPM, and this is not
only unfair but an unlawful misinterpetration of the Education Ministry’s own
regulations which can be challenged in a court of law.
The Cabinet on Wednesday should
announce that all diploma holders with CGPA mark above 3 would all be offered
places in public universities, as this is generally regarded as a “highly
satisfactory” result. I
understand that at present, there are diploma students who score the top CGPA
mark of 4 whose university applications have not been considered at all –
which is completely against the Education Ministry’s profession of wanting to
create a world-class education system.
The
Education Minister, Tan Sri Musa Mohamad and Education Ministry officials,
including his deputy education ministers, must be made to realize that they
cannot arbitrarily destroy the legitimate
expectations of diploma students to proceed to first-degree university courses
based on academic excellence as has been the practice in the past without being
challenged in a court of law for their unlawful actions. Diploma students who
want a test case and a class action to
challenge the unlawful decision of
the Education Ministry in refusing
to consider their university applications should contact DAP MPs, Assemblymen,
officials and branches.
(27/5/2002)