Colleges use confidential info to get students.

The Star
Saturday August 6, 2005

Colleges use confidential info to get students

BY GAVIN GOMEZ

KUALA LUMPUR: Confidential student data is being used by some private
colleges to solicit potential students who failed to get places in
public universities.

They claim to have obtained the names, contact details and other
personal information of students from the public universities?
admissions unit or UPU, which comes under the Higher Education
Ministry.

Upon receiving letters of offer for specific courses as well as phone
calls from these colleges, parents and students who checked with these
institutions were told that the information was from UPU (Unit Pusat
Universiti).

?My son received at least six such letters a week after the university
admission results were out. We were very surprised by how they got his
details. One college actually said in its letter that it would like to
offer my son a specific course as he had failed to obtain a place in a
university,? said a full-time mother from Kepong.

Staff members of two colleges, when contacted by The Star incognito,
said they obtained the student data from UPU.

?It was exclusive to members of our association. Only a few colleges
have this information,? said the admissions officer of one the
colleges when contacted. Her handphone number was printed on the
letter of offer.

However, on checking with other colleges which are not members of this
association, several of them said they too had been approached to buy
the student data through various sources.

One private college operator said a ?ministry officer? offered him the
list in June with an asking price of more than RM1,000 per student.

?We were told that we had to buy the list in a batch of over a
thousand students which means we had to fork out over RM1mil for the
information. I told them I wasn?t interested,? he added.

Claimed another private college marketing manager: ?We were offered
the list through a third party for RM8,000. This is nothing new as the
UPU list has been on sale for a few years now.?

Higher Education Minister Datuk Dr Shafie Salleh said he was not aware
of such incidents.

The ministry?s Higher Education Management Department deputy
director-general Prof Datuk Yusuf Kassim said information provided by
the students to UPU was protected under the Official Secrets Act
(OSA).

?This is all under OSA. Don?t play the fool. The penalty (for leaking
the information) is 20 years in prison.?

He said he was aware of the allegations but denied that such a thing
was happening.

?We have never given the information out. This is all a business
gimmick. The college operators will be the best people to ask,? he
told reporters after attending the Japan Airlines 2005 scholarship
award ceremony on Thursday.

Association of Private Education Institutions president Dr Mohamed
Thalha Alithamby said there should be a mechanism to get the consent
of students before releasing any list to private institutions.

?They should be allowed to state in their varsity application forms
whether or not their information can be provided to private
institutions. Of course, this information should then be given to all
colleges and not just a select few,? he said.


The Star
Saturday August 6, 2005

Parents: How did colleges obtain list?

KUALA LUMPUR: Parents and students want to know how private colleges
have gained access to names and telephone numbers of applicants who
were rejected by local public universities.

A parent, who declined to be named, said his daughter had received
about 20 letters from private colleges inviting her to take up an
offer to study at their college.

Another parent complained that her son was facing a lot of pressure
after getting ?junk mail? from some colleges, adding that he could not
understand how the colleges had obtained his name.

A letter from a private college read: ?We know that your application
for entry into local universities had been rejected by the Unit
Pendaftaran Universiti (UPU) and we can offer you a place and loan so
that you can further your studies.?

Another parent complained that private colleges, in some cases, were
misleading the recipients by using envelopes of public universities to
send letters.

?How can this be so,? the parent asked, adding that what the private
colleges were doing was unethical.
.

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