1st class.

RM59.7 juta pinjaman PTPTN jadi biasiswa

2010/10/01

KUALA LUMPUR: Sejumlah RM59.7 juta pinjaman Perbadanan Tabung Pendidikan Tinggi Nasional (PTPTN) ditukarkan kepada biasiswa sebagai pelepasan kepada 2,162 pelajar institusi pengajian tinggi awam (IPTA) dan swasta (IPTS) yang memperoleh ijazah kelas pertama, tahun ini.

Pelaksanaan dasar baru itu selaras pengumuman Perdana Menteri, Datuk Seri Najib Razak, dalam pembentangan Bajet 2010 tahun lalu bahawa kerajaan akan menukarkan pinjaman PTPTN kepada biasiswa bagi pelajar yang memperoleh ijazah sarjana muda kelas pertama atau setaraf bermula tahun ini.

This was taken from Berita Harian, today, October 1st. Well, this is good news isn't it? But have you wonder what does 1st class honor even means? If you ask my uni friends, they would tell that this is not fair.

There are two types of university we have here in Malaysia, the high end and low end university. Let me get this straight first, this has nothing to do with the ranking or the level of any institutes, it's just the different approach taken by them. For example, the learning process in the high end universities are focusing more on theories and research while the low end universities, have more experties on the application and the technical areas.

Therefore, the distribution of marks are different. What they have in the high end universities, 80%~90% marks are relying at their final exams as they are all written test, while the rest comes from the tutorial, or any projects in between the semester. On the other hand, the low end universities have a balance mark distribution, maybe 50~60% marks for the final and the rest comes from their project or tutorial.

So it's different, totally different... Correct me if I'm wrong, but from my experience, I don't think the students have much problem in scoring the projects as some of them are done in group, and the marks are really subjective.

Anyway, there's no need to argue much. Either way, it's not as easy as it seems. So, congratulations, anda bebas daripada PTPTN. Hehe~