University Entrance & Greetings

The new intake for the year 2007/2008 in Malaysia's university is just right around the corner. Students are now getting information on which degree course are being made available to them. Some found out that their top choices have been disregarded despite having high grades.

This dilemma is a yearly affair where those with good STPM results are denied their degree course of their choice (as made in application). The Higher Education Ministry in various states would be deluged by students/parents making their pleas/appeals.

Sometimes I really wonder how the Higher Education Ministry assess those applications. Is there something else behind those assessment, like unwritten/hidden rules, unknown to the public at large. In the next few days, we'll get to see newspapers' reports highlighting such sad situation hitting top students in the country.

Just when some of those who got their choice of degree course, they may not have prepared themselves for what will happen in the university. It's RAGGING. This ragging word has a nicer name now which is called ORIENTATION but actions behind that word were still the same.

I took up a professional course so I didn't have the chance to experience local university life....want to know why I took up a professional course instead of STPM? Most of you would know even if I don't tell you......not my own doing of course.

I have heard of ragging which was fun and laugther would fill the room or hall. Some seniors took it personally as a revenge. Just passing on what they have experienced when they were freshies. Fights would erupt. Threats would arose. Subsequent torturing life in the campus made worse if you had fought against the raggings. The Higher Education Ministry, as usual, is just waiting for a dead body before they will take any actions. As highlighted in a letter to The Star Editor, the fears created in the freshies' mind were so bad that many suffered in silence.

Why did they suffer in silence? For fear of further humiliation and losing their place in the university if such situation was made known to the press/public. The writer has a name for such seniors - sadistic.

Such ragging is not only found in local universities but also in military schools or army camps. What are such seniors trying to show? That they are macho? A year older? More brains?
Tags: University Entrance, STPM, Higher Education Ministry, Ragging, Orientation, Education, University