State universities admit 63,090 people

JAKARTA (JP): The government announced yesterday the 63,090 people who passed the entrance exams for the 89 state universities nationwide.

The announcement, made through some local newspapers and lists distributed at the Senayan Sports Stadium, was greeted with elation by those who passed, and tears or indifference by some of the 412,638 people not admitted.

"I think I'll go to Saudi Arabia to study," Agung, a graduate from Pondok Gontor Islamic boarding school in East Java, said when he found he had not been admitted to the School of Politics and Social Sciences at the University of Indonesia.

Seats at the 89 state universities are popular because of the better education and lower tuition fees. State colleges are heavily subsidized by the government.

The number of people taking the exams this year dropped by 1.69 percent from 419,737 last year.

Declining

Budi Sampurna, a member of the exam committee, while confirming a declining interest in enrolling at state universities, said some parts of the country, particularly the eastern provinces, showed an increase in the number of people who took the test.

Officials believe that the decline in the number of participants is due to many high school graduates deciding to enroll at private universities without bothering to take the state exam.

Sampurna said there were still some space in certain unpopular programs at the state universities.

"Most of the programs are teaching programs," he said.

He cited the physics, mathematics, chemistry and home economics teaching programs as among those that were not filled to capacity. The development economics program also has some vacant seats.

Sampurna said that of the 63,090 admitted, 24,809 were enrolled in natural science, 20,261 in social science, 5,683 in the natural science teaching program and 12,337 in the social science teaching program.

In terms of the number of applicants, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta ranked first, followed by the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), the University of Indonesia in Jakarta and the March 11 University (UNS) in Surakarta.

Grades

A total of 43,943 people applied to Gadjah Mada but only 2,061 were admitted. ITB admitted 1,610 students from 36,460 applicants. University of Indonesia admitted 1,112 students out of 28,207 applicants. UNS took in 606 students from 16,129 applicants.

Meanwhile, Soesmalijah Soewondo, chairman of the committee of entrance exams for Jakarta, said at the University of Indonesia's main campus in nearby Depok that the committee wouldn't announce the grades of the students because they would cause controversy about the quality of Indonesian high schools and teachers. (05)