Materia Medica Malaysiana

New entrance procedure for top scorers

KUALA LUMPUR: A three-tier admission procedure is likely to be introduced for top scorers intending to further their studies in critical courses in public universities.

Higher Education Minister Datuk Dr Shafie Mohd Salleh said that for a course like medicine, qualified students might be taken on hospital visits and made to undergo interviews to gauge their aptness for the profession.

“We want to be sure that the student will make a good doctor, not only academically but also in his or her attitude towards people,” he told reporters after chairing his ministry’s post-Cabinet meeting.

Dr Shafie said that only students who passed the visit-and-interview phase would be asked to sit for a proposed Medical School Admission Test.

This was as among the proposals he presented to the Cabinet yesterday to avoid a repeat of this year’s situation where 128 top scorers were denied places for courses of their choice in public universities.

Dr Shafie said a ministry committee would be set up to study this and other proposals.

Another area that would be looked into was the welfare of medical teaching staff, including their workload, promotion system, salaries and staff management system.

Also to be studied by the committee are the facilities in public universities, the promoting of studies in other critical courses such as bio-technology and physiotherapy and the development of a symbiotic relationship between the Higher Education Ministry, Health Ministry and Public Services Department (PSD).

Dr Shafie said of the 128 top-scoring students, 99 had been offered places in private universities and the remainder in public universities.

On the criteria for the 99 students to qualify for convertible loans offered by the PSD, he said they would have to obtain first class honours or equivalent for the loans to be converted into scholarships.

Asked about the fate of the PSD scholars whose Japanese medical degrees were not recognised by the Malaysian Medical Council (MMC), Dr Shafie said that the Cabinet had agreed that they would have to undergo a six to 12-month training stint at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

“The students were first asked to undergo training in UKM (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) but it has no space,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Japanese embassy here has expressed surprise over the MMC’s non-recognition of medical degrees from two universities that are highly sought after in Japan.

The two universities, Chiba and Akita, have very strict entry requirements and even Japanese students found it difficult to qualify for their medical schools, the embassy’s First Secretary for Education Koji Takahashi said.

“We are very surprised. We do not know the details why the degrees are not recognised while there are government-sponsored students there.

“We are contacting the PSD to find out more,” he said in a telephone interview.

Meanwhile, the Japan Graduates’ Association of Malaysia has called on the government to recognise more Japanese degrees.

It said in a statement that based on a list published by the PSD in 2002, the medical degrees of only 10 Japanese universities were recognised by the government and MMC.