GPA-5: Blessing or a disaster?

Last year, a staggering total of 70,000 students got GPA-5, better known as A+, in the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) examinations. This number is significantly higher than any of the previous years since the grading system for public exams was introduced 10 years ago. An A+ is the best possible result that a student can aspire for.
However, if there were more than 39,380 seats in all the public universities and medical colleges in Bangladesh, nobody would have hesitated to agree with the government that the HSC results reflected "the tremendous progress that the education sector has made".
Apparently, students with the best results are expected to get into the top public institutions because of the general perception that the 'better' students should get enrolled in the public universities and medical colleges. But a colossal gap of 30,000 between the number of students with A+ and the number of seats available in public universities indicates the gross mismatch in our education system.
The private universities, some of which have done well in the recent years, could have been an alternative. But the high cost of education in the private universities proves too much for most of the parents to send their gifted progenies there. Moreover, it is irrational that almost 60,000 seats in the private universities would suffice for the remaining 'A+ students', let alone 830,000 students who have passed the HSC examination with lower grades.
Virtually, every household now has a member with GPA-5. When the results are published, every household therefore has a reason to share sweets with friends, relatives and neighbours. Yet, most of those households do not know what a bleak future awaits their sons and daughters.
Generally, the admission tests at public universities start shortly after the results and continue for a few more months. Nevertheless, holders of GPA-5 soon encounter the vagueness of their 'fantastic results' once the admission process ends and thousands of them often find themselves in the middle of nowhere - failing to qualify for a public university not because they are incompetent but the institutions lack enough seats to accommodate them.
Perhaps, one of the candidates for an admission test is as good as Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs but s/he fails to qualify because of wrongly filling in only one of those fateful circles in the MCQ answer sheets. Subsequently, there is every reason that the student will be peddling drugs, mugging in the streets of Dhaka or be on the run as a most-wanted criminal instead of revolutionising the scientific education of Bangladesh.       
Furthermore, the developed countries have settled for one thing: "higher education is not for all". Their secondary and higher secondary levels of education is much stronger. The feasible education and training at those levels are sufficient for entering the job market even if one refuses to pursue higher education. Nonetheless, their economies offer job scopes even for high school graduates which our country does not. Surprisingly, job circulars in Bangladesh often require postgraduate degrees for doing something that even an eighth-grader can carry out with ease.
Lastly, the government does not realise that half of the students with GPA-5 find themselves stranded after the completion of admissions each year. They leave behind a question that is difficult to answer - most of them fail to get enrolled in a public university and their parents are even unable to send them to private universities. The government should come up with a solution for them. Otherwise, their number will increase by tens of thousands every year and that will be disastrous in the long run.
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