In post tsunami debacle, fewer students sit Syiah Kuala University entrance exams

Nani Afrida, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

Eighteen-year-old Sarah diligently read the exam paper during a university entrance exam on Wednesday at Syiah Kuala University in Banda Aceh, with her forehead creasing up now and again in exasperation as she grappled with some of the more obscure questions.

Emerging from the exam hall an hour later, she said that she had done her best and was reasonably confident, given the circumstances.

"I couldn't answer a lot of the questions, but I think that that is understandable as our school was closed after the tsunami struck in December last year. As a result, we fell very far behind," she said.

Sarah wants to study medicine at Syiah Kuala University, having wanted to become a doctor ever since she was a child. Despite the problems she had with the test papers, she still hopes she will secure a place in the Medical School as the number of applicants has been low.

This year, the number of senior high school graduates who sat the entrance examinations for various schools in Syiah Kuala University only amounted to some 8,000, much less than the usual 11,000 students who sit the tests each year.

The tsunami, which killed approximately 129,000 people in Aceh, is the principal cause of the decline in the number of candidates sitting the entrance tests. But, there is also another reason. Many high school graduates have opted to go to university outside Aceh as the cost of living in Banda Aceh has increased dramatically.

"A lot of facilities have been damaged by the tsunami, including student boarding houses. As there are fewer boarding houses, rents have soared so that the students can no longer afford them," said Darni Daud, the acting rector of Syiah Kuala University.

Syiah Kuala University has places for 3,307 new students this year. A total of 628 out of these 3,307 places have been given to students who passed another round of entrance tests held earlier by the University, leaving 2,679 places for the latest crop of students.

Currently the university has some 22,000 students, while 1,426 of its students perished in the tsunami, or are still missing. The university has exempted 1,014 students affected by the tsunami from paying fees.