AS with every year, this year's HSC examinees will be battling it out to find a seat in one of the more prestigious universities in the country. The situation is not helped by the paucity of seats with nearly 300,000 candidates securing GPA-4 and above. They are jostling to get a place in one of the 55 public and private universities and 53 private medical and 9 dental colleges offering a net total of 8,500 seats in all. What is ironical in this overall scenario is the lack of interest of the bulk of good students to enrol in the estimated 500 colleges under National University located in rural areas, primarily due to poor quality of education and following outdated curricula.

With the ministry of education toying with introduction of a uniform admission test at all universities under a “cluster system" which would allow for students' admission based on results, this year's candidates will have to follow the old system. That means this year too students will be rushing to coaching centres expending large sums of money which most parents would be happy not to part with. Not only is it a question of expenses, many prestigious universities examination dates clash with one another which adds further salt to injury as a prospective candidate's chances of admission turn slimmer.

To our mind, results of previous exams combined with the performance in the admission test should form a rational criterion foradmission to higher studies.