by Mary Mag Letters
Just wanted to share some of my thoughts/questions regarding the JPA scholarships policy.
I believe it is important to recognize and reward merit and tap young potential , so it is important to continue with ‘merit scholarships’.
But the government must clearly differentiate between ‘merit scholarships’ (that must be based solely on merit criteria) and others based on ethnic or socio-economic considerations.
At the moment, there is no clear demarcation and there is still a lack of transparency regarding many aspects. As taxpayers, we have the right to know all the information. Regarding JPA overseas scholarships for SPM high achievers, the practice now is to send them to UiTM or slelected private colleges for ‘preparatory/foundation’ courses. A few questions arise:
Although JPA scholarships only affect a very small percentage of the population, it always gets a lot of political mileage.
I wish politicians will pay more attention to more basic issues that affect the larger population – e.g. the quality of primary and secondary education, wage levels, inflation rate, misuse of public funds, etc…