Moratorium on medical studies to be reviewed

Source: The Star
  18 January 2015

KUALA LUMPUR: The current moratorium on new medical programmes, which ends this year, is being reviewed.

Deputy Education Minister P. Kamalana­than said the matter would be decided next month or so.

“The ministry is reviewing the issue. We will bring it up to the Cabinet by February,” he said after opening the Star Education Fair 2015. In 2011, the Higher Education Ministry announced a five-year freeze on new medical programmes in view of a glut in trainee doctors.

“Sometimes parents are stricter than the Malaysian Qualifications Agency – they only seem to recognise these four fields (medicine, engineering, law and accounting).

“Other countries have a similar issue; at the National University of Singapore, there are only 300 seats for medicine, with 3,000 students applying for them.”

“Exhibitions like the Star Education Fair help show us that the world is more than just that,” he said.

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