A to­tal of 12,218 ap­pli­ca­tions were de­nied fund­ing through the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (GATE) pro­gramme over the pe­ri­od 2008 to 2011. Of that num­ber, 4,616 ap­pli­ca­tions were due to poor aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance; 6,293 failed to com­plete a pri­or pro­gramme; 784 ex­ceed­ed max­i­mum fund­ing and 525 re­peat­ed a pro­gramme or lev­el that was not al­lowed or ad­di­tion­al in­for­ma­tion was re­quired.

This was re­vealed in the fi­nal Re­port of the Stand­ing Com­mit­tee on the GATE pro­gramme-Se­cur­ing and Ex­pand­ing the GATE Pro­gramme. A source close to the com­mit­tee said the GATE Clear­ance Pol­i­cy in­tro­duced in 2008 de­tect­ed sev­er­al oc­cur­rences of stu­dent mis­use of the GATE pro­gramme. Close to $10 mil­lion was re­im­bursed by stu­dents for about 3,000 grants for in­com­plete pro­grammes.

Quot­ing from the re­port, the source said: "Stu­dents with in­com­plete pro­grammes are re­quired to re­im­burse the Min­istry of Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing (for­mer­ly the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion) all monies paid on their be­half for said pro­grammes, or pay tu­ition fees for a por­tion of any oth­er ap­proved pro­gramme they wish to pur­sue.

"Stu­dents who at­tend pub­lic ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions are ex­empt­ed from the GATE Clear­ance Pol­i­cy, as these in­sti­tu­tions are ex­pect­ed to act in the best in­ter­est of the State and to close­ly mon­i­tor stu­dents' aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance. "How­ev­er, there has been grow­ing ev­i­dence of weak­en­ing stu­dent per­for­mance in the pub­lic ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions which sug­gests the need to in­tro­duce an as­sess­ment mech­a­nism for el­i­gi­bil­i­ty to­wards con­tin­ued GATE fund­ing," the source said.

Tu­ition fees at ap­proved lo­cal pri­vate ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tions in­creased from an av­er­age of $7,940 per stu­dent in 2007 to an av­er­age of $13,031 per stu­dent in 2011. The av­er­age cost for fund­ing a stu­dent en­rolled in a GATE-ap­proved pro­gramme at a pri­vate ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in­sti­tu­tion in­creased at an av­er­age rate of 13 per cent per year for the 2007 to 2011 pe­ri­od, far ex­ceed­ing the av­er­age in­fla­tion rate of 9.2 per cent over the same pe­ri­od.

The source re­vealed that $41 mil­lion in funds were re­cov­ered from pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions and that this amount was equiv­a­lent to a sub­stan­tial four per cent of GATE dis­burse­ment to these in­sti­tu­tions.