HOPE Program

Saw this interesting website after a Star article highlighted it. It's called HOPE and it stands for Higher Opportunities for Private Education. It is an organization that is set up by 9 private colleges with the intention of giving an opportunity for those who cannot get into a public university a place in one of these private colleges at around the same cost as a public university.

I think the idea behind HOPE is a good one which is to give students who otherwise could not afford to attend college or university an opportunity to obtain a degree. While many of our readers might not fall into this category, I'm sure that there are many students from lower middle class backgrounds who have been rejected in their application to attend a public university and then found themselves unable to afford to attend a private college or university.

While the cost of a private college education has decreased with the establishment of 3+0 and 2+1 degrees, I'm sure that the cost is still out of the reach of some Malaysians.

Which is why I think HOPE is a timely idea. Most of the colleges behind this initiative are relatively established in Malaysia. They include Nilai, Inti, LimKokWing, Stamford and SEGI.

My only question regarding HOPE is this - what is their selection mechanism such that they can ensure that a relatively high proportion of students who apply to the HOPE program are those which the program is trying to target?

For example, what is to stop a middle class student who was intending to attend a private college from applying to HOPE to take advantage of the lower fees?

I think some internal controls include the salary of a student's household and the occupation of a student's father and mother (which is required in the application form)

According to the application form, the dates for this program is from the 1st of June to the 31st of July, 2008. I hope that some of our readers who fit into this category of students will consider applying for this program.

The only thing I don't like about HOPE is that they asked Ong Tee Keat to be their patron. I really don't see the need to involve a political figure in such a program but I guess that's how things work in Malaysia (or rather how people THINK things should work).