Editorial: On unimpeachability

Many agree on the need for a radical overhaul of the university entrance system, for reasons that are patently obvious.

There is no other way for the education system to stop producing students that are parroting rote learning.  There is also no other way to combat the huge private tutoring industry, which prepares students for university exams, and which transforms an educational system that is supposedly free for all citizens into an exorbitantly costly affair for families.

The changes in the university entry system that were announced by the education ministry do not meet these needs, despite the fact that the minister has often announced the full abolition of university entrance exams.

As if that were not enough, the planned changes feed suspicions that there will be an undermining of a major achievement of the university entry exam system, which one finds nowhere else in the public sphere, the unimpeachability of the process.

The suspicion that access to university faculties for which there is a high demand among candidates will be available not only for the studious, but also for the cunning, is the last thing the country needs.

The last thing that university students need is the conviction that even the university admissions system was corrupted by the usual ills that characterise almost all evaluation procedures in the state.

Young people have dreams.

If the education minister and the government overall are incapable of making things better, at least let them not make matters worse.