No Loan For AUCMS!

If at the time, government bodies with authority, such as the Ministry of Higher Education, had done something about the Allianze University College of Medical Sciences (AUCMS) issue, there is a distinct possibility that this whole fiasco could have been averted. Now, after all that has happened, AUCMS has asked the federal government for a loan to handle its financial crisis. The Consumers Association of Penang (CAP) believes that under no circumstance should the federal government support or even consider giving AUCMS a loan for the following reasons:

1. AUCMS’s claim that they are faced with financial issues and not mismanagement is bizarre. Isn’t AUCMS experiencing financial issues due to its mismanagement?

2. If indeed the federal government does give AUCMS a loan, we are curious to know where exactly would the money come from.

3. A loan to AUCMS would entail money to settle off all its debts and finances to operate the institute for some time. This would be an obscenely large amount of money as most of their lecturers are actually professionals in the medical field and have very “high salaries”.

4. Hypothetically, if AUCMS is given a loan and they get the institution up and running again, how exactly do they plan on bringing in enough money so that they can sustain themselves? Increasing student fees is not an option as it wouldn’t even cover AUCMS’s huge expenses. With all this bad publicity are they even likely to bring in new students? We predict that AUCMS will face this same problem when the hypothetical loan money runs out.

5. Bailing AUCMS out of their financial crisis will set a precedent for other failing educational institutions to seek out the federal government for financial assistance. It will result in a whole different can of worms that once opened will not be able to be stoppered.

Press Statement, 21 November 2014