Intake and reduction of medical students: Education Minister must reveal full facts and figures

It was reported in today’s media that when commenting on the public university intake of medical students, Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam has said the following:-

1. That the Malaysian Medical Council ( MMC) did not direct the public universities to reduce the intake of medical students
2. That a total of 1550 medical places have been allocated to 11 public university medical schools but so far only 919 students have been accepted
3. That he has requested the Education Ministry to look into ways to increase the intake of medical students in public universities.
4. That the figure of 418 places taken up this year mentioned by Deputy Education Minister P Kamalanathan was only the figure of those applications done through UPU (Bahagian Pengurusan Kemasukkan Pelajar). Other research universities like Universiti Malaya and Universiti Sains Malaysia carry out their own student recruitment.

Both denials by Subramaniam and MMC have refuted Deputy Education Minister P Kalamanathan’s claim that MMC has requested the reduction.

Kamalanathan must therefore make a public apology for making a false claim. He should also explain how he came to make that claim.

Subramaniam has however a responsibility to answer questions arising from what he has said.

Firstly, if the universities have been allocated a total quota of 1550 places, why have they decided to only accept 919 students?

Since the question of qualified applicants does not arise as many top scorers have complained of not being offered the medical programmes, could fund shortage or lack of staff be the issues?

As the Health Minister, surely Subramaniam should be interested and even responsible to immediately find out the reasons.

Secondly, in the UPU figures quoted by Kalamanathan, it is obvious that there was a reduction from last year’s intake. He mentioned places offered last year was 699 compared to this year’s 418.

So why did Kamalanathan only provide UPU figures and not the overall figures to explain why many top scorers have failed to obtain their favoured university courses?

Was it an attempt to mislead the students and the public? Who provided Kalamalanathan the figures?

I have been saying that there have been annual reductions since 2011/2012 academic year as evidenced from the following statistics:-

Based on what Subramaniam said, it is obvious that these published statistics should only be referring to applications handled by UPU.

In today’s news media, Minister in the Prime Minister’s department Datuk Wee Ka Siong also revealed the same statistics, confirming the reduction since 2011/2012 academic year.

So obviously Wee was referring to the same UPU figures used by Kamalanathan.

With a deputy Minister( Kamalanathan ) and a Minister ( Wee ) quoting only UPU figures, public are entitled to ask if there have been intentional moves to try to avoid giving the accurate and full facts to the public. Or could it be that both Kamalanathan and Wee were unaware that they were only given UPU figures?

The Education Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin must show transparency and reveal the full facts and figures on the intake of as well as the reduction of intake of new medical students by public universities.