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Fascinating article! A breath of fresh air away from the current IMF/FEER atmosphere.
Just a few thoughts.
1) Has the percentage of foreign student as stated in Table 2 actually maintained at 20% for the last few years? What if the percentage is higher? Will it change your conclusion?
2) Are these intake figures as of total exclude SMU and SIM? What if both of them are included too? Or am I reading the article wrongly?
3) What is the dropout rate/natural attrition rate of NUS/NTU/SMU? If dropout rates are included, are more Singaporeans actually graduating from universities? It might be easier for local students to ENTER universities but argubly, are more of them also graduating from the universities?
4) Another bearbug of Singaporeans student in local universities is that some might percieve the foreigners "taking" their "first class and second upper", relegating them to scrap the bottom of the barrel? Have the number of Singaporeans obtaining first and second upper reduced significantly since 1996 then?
Very diligent, Hui Chieh. However let me quickly give you another way to look at the matter.
Many Singaporeans go overseas to study. Some are high flyers on government scholarships. For some, NUS/NTU/SMU simply isn't good enough and they want to go to Harvard etc. Others come from families so wealthy that it does not really hurt them to send the son/daughter overseas to study.
However, there are a significant number of Singaporeans who go overseas primarily because they cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU. Also, they don't come from wealthy families. In other words, Daddy & Mummy fork out a painful chunk of their savings to finance their child's overseas education.
The irony is that although these Singaporeans cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU, they are often accepted into quite respectable universities overseas, ranked comparably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU. Furthermore they often end up doing quite well in their studies.
I look at this from the financial planning perspective - which is personally of quite a lot of interest to me. It seems to me that (i) many Singaporeans are forking out significant amounts of money because their children need to study overseas, and (ii) their children are not inherently stupid or undeserving of a university place.
As a society, we should be concerned about the long-term implications because this phenomenon seriously affects the ability of the Singaporean parents to save and provide for their own retirement. I do not know the costs of, say, a Singaporean studying in Australia, UK or the US today, but I imagine that SGD $150,000 - $300,000 is a fair estimate for the costs over 3 or 4 years of undergrad studies. That is a large sum.
Why can't their kids be given a place in NUS/NTU/SMU instead? Instead of a foreigner from India or China, heavily subsidised by your and my income tax?
I think there are two factors concerning the 'Local Pool' that we have to consider.
1. The pool of local applicants should also include that of repeat applicants. For example, there may also be poly and JC applicants with qualifications more than 2 years old when they apply.
2. The number of GCE A-level graduates with 2A's and 2 AO's should not be regarded as being synonymous with the number locals with 2A's and 2 AO's. The same goes for poly graduates. The reason is because there has been a significant increase in the number of foreigners in our JCs and polys (for example, more SIA-India scholarships and a larger SM1 intake from PRC).
The irony is that although these Singaporeans cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU, they are often accepted into quite respectable universities overseas, ranked comparably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU. Furthermore they often end up doing quite well in their studies.
You know my sixth aunt just struck 4D a couple of weeks ago. She made $20K. Who says gambling doesn't pay?
Good comments all. Thank you. Let me preface my response with this: I am frustrated at the lack of good, detailed, and publicly available data... Nonetheless, the question remains whether anything can be made from what data is available. More importantly, if you know of any good information that might be relevant, tell me!
Wayne:
1. We just don't know if NUS/NTU/SMU maintained the foreign intake at 20% or whether the number has been exceeded. If that percentage is drastically exceeded, then my conclusion will definitely change (should be able to work out the margin at which it will change). My own sense is that it is maintained at roughly that, but this is not something that can be proven from available data (so far).
2. The intake figures are for the local universities, which include SMU as soon as it came online (but not SIM).
3. I can't find good figures for the dropout rates for the universities (yet). Interestingly, we do have the Gross Graduation Ratio" for the universities for 2000-2004 (hovering betwen 20.9-19.9%), which is not really a good proxy. [The gross graduation ratio is calculated as the total number of graduates (graduates themselves may be out of any age) at the specified level of education divided by the population at the typical graduates age from the specified level.] Might make another attempt to locate better figures.
4. I hope to tackle this issue in another post.
Mr. Wang:
There is a sense in which the issue you raised--while legitimate and important--does not really touch base with what I am talking about in the post (except perhaps indirectly). It is entirely true that there are local students who go overseas not because they want to, but because they can't get into NUS/NTU/SMU (I actually mentioned them in passing at one point in the post). But it is not clear at all that their plight has a lot to do with the influx of international students at all.
That is, assuming that my analysis of the available is correct, the aggressive recruitment of international students since 1998 (following the recommendations of the International Academic Advisory Panel which came to Singapore in 1997 and gave their report in 1998--I should write something about this background at some point) is not correlated with any increased difficulty for the local student getting into NUS/NTU/SMU (that difficulty being proxied by the ratio between the Local Pool and the Local Intake). If it is hard after 1998 to get into NUS/NTU/and later, SMU, it was even harder in 1992-1995 and definitely even harder than that before 1992 (looking at Chart 2). This suggests that if a local student did not get into NUS/NTU/SMU, it is somewhat problematic to blame it on the foreign students--their presence have not made it harder for you to get into NUS/NTU/SMU. In fact, their influx actually coincided with the fact that it has become easier, generally speaking, then before, to get into NUS/NTU/SMU.
Having said all that, as I said, I do think that you are on to something important. To put it in the words of what someone in the IAAP said, "It is not possible to educate a large portion of a country's university's cohort and at the same time become world-class [i.e., as Harvard, or pick your own favorite, is world-class] in a narrowly-defined sense." (cited in Christine Han, "Singapore: Review of Educational Events in 1998", Asia Pacific Journal of Education 19.2 (1999), 112). The real shape of the problem is really this: the goal of upgrading NUS/NTU/SMU--desirable as it might be--may well be incompatible with another set of desirable social goals. I don't think this problem can ever be resolved until we have a wider range of educational possibilities (a 4th university, more foreign universities opening shop here, etc.).
One final point: about the irony of students who "cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU" but are "accepted into quite respectable universities overseas, ranked comparably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU". First, this definitely happens, but I doubt that it happens "often"--if by that you mean that a majority of those who get turned down by NUS/NTU/SMU did or could get into, say, Harvard, MIT, Berkeley, Oxford, Stanford, etc. Secondly, even in the case where it happens, there actually is no irony but a perfectly rational state of affairs. I promise to post something to do with this but please wait for it.
Fox:
1. Indeed; which is why ultimately, the "Local Pool" is really an abstraction. It is meant to give us a grip on the issues over time, not to actually represent a real number. To add to the problem: don't forget that the guys in each A-Level batch enroll two years after the girls. There are also 'mature' students who worked or took time off before applying. But my assumption is that, ultimately, these various things will cancel out if we focus not on the specific numbers but see them as constituting a historical series (i.e., focus on the trends).
2. Absolutely. I defined a member of the Local Pool as someone graduating from the local system (either A-level or poly)--and he or she may not be 'local' as in native. But note that the usual complaint is that the influx of international students in the universities has made it harder for a 'local' to get into NUS/NTU/SMU. That is, the perceived competition is not that Malaysian or Chinese or India guy who went to Secondary School with you and took the A-Levels in the same batch (and who, if he applies to NUS/NTU/SMU, will be admitted using the same criterion as you anyway), but the other Malaysian or Chinese or India guy, coming from Malaysia, China or India, who is admitted to NUS/NTU/SMU at that level. (The irony is that the foreign student who took the A-Levels with you competes in the same race as you and is thus, together with all your other peers, your real competitor in getting to NUS/NTU/SMU; not so that other foreign student coming straight from Malaysia/China/India.)
Once again, thank you for the comments (keep them rolling).
re: the irony of students who "cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU" but are "accepted into quite respectable universities overseas, ranked comparably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU".
Now I am speaking from what I know, partly from my own experience and the experience of people I know. Needless to say, this is very partial. So feel free to correct me if you have better information.
Let's consider the case of a local student from the JCs applying. From what I know, until quite recently, the local Universities--for the large majority of cases--admit students based on a simple cut-off based upon the A-Level results. The cut-off for each course may move between years, but usually only very marginally (at least for the time when I as an undergraduate, and later advising younger friends applying). In many case, whether one will or will not get into a specific course can be fairly accurately predicted based upon the grades of past batches.
My own guess is that the cut-off is itself, probably, a function of intelligent guesswork on the part of university officials given their sense of the A-Level results plus whatever directive MOM might deign to give them concerning Singapore's manpower needs, but we need not get into that. The point is that this is necessarily a rather "one-size-fits-all" way of sorting (something from which NUS/NTU have begun moving away, but that's another story). But it is, on the whole, an efficient system given the cost of information and other inherent constraints.
Now imagine a student who was turned down by NUS/NTU for a specific course, but accepted by, say, Brown or Dartmouth (or pick your favorite "respectable University"). One thing for sure is that the student fail to be on the right side of the cut-off at NUS/NTU. Sure there is the appeal process, but it's dicey. This much is obvious.
But why is the person accepted at the other place? Two possible reason: (a) it has a lower cut-off (if it uses any analogous system), or quite likely, (b) it is just willing and able to expend more resources to give that special attention necessary to sort applying students in a more fine-grained way. If that other university is both smaller and richer, or just plain much richer, (b) is almost certainly the reason. (Some student numbers for comparison: NUS- 30,000+, U Penn- 23,000+, Columbia- 23,000+, Harvard, 19,000+, Yale- 11,000+, Brown- 7,800+, Princeton- 6,600+, Dartmouth- 5,700+.) This sort of thing explains why people--in the US--get turned down by some large mediocre state college but gets accepted into a prestigeous (small) liberal arts college--all the time. It's not something unique to NUS/NTU, etc. but a predictable systematic feature given the cost of information and the ever present need to trade-off.
On the other hand, the reason might also be (a), which is again not necessarily mysterious. Very good universities (i.e., generally accepted as better than NUS/NTU) in the US or Canada or Britain, etc., often have apparently lower cut-offs (in SAT equivalent) partly because of the nature of the application pool they draw upon. It is no secret that a student coming out from the Singapore system at A-Level has already done material that is, often enough, to be covered in the freshman year in college. In general, our students are just so much better prepared compared to the US/Canadian/British counterpart--at the freshman level. It is thus no wonder that the cut-offs in these universities are apparently lower than the equivalents in NUS/NTU. If they had asked for similar qualifications, lots of their own applicants are not going to make it!
But here's the catch: a Singaporean student in the US university system might have a "headstart" of sorts, but my impression is that things pick up at a faster pace (from 2nd year on) than probably in NUS/NTU, so that by the end of the 3 or 4 years, he would have covered as much if not more than the equivalent NUS/NTU peer.
The US/Canadian/British school system--in general (but not necessary in detail)--pales in comparison with ours when it comes to the straight forward training of academic skills (by all means we can debate the pros and cons of the trade off involved). Anecdote: a (Singaporean) couple friend who is now living in Canada tells me how the public school system in which their three boys are enrolled is such a joke (compared to ours), that they sent one of the boys to a French speaking school, reasoning: he is not going to learn anything anyway, so at least pick up French! But note: their university system--the good universities--is no joke. Otherwise, the US won't be such favored destination for people around the world seeking the best higher education that money can buy.
Absolutely. I defined a member of the Local Pool as someone graduating from the local system (either A-level or poly)--and he or she may not be 'local' as in native. But note that the usual complaint is that the influx of international students in the universities has made it harder for a 'local' to get into NUS/NTU/SMU.
No. If I am not wrong, when Singaporeans say 'local', they usually mean native. I'm sure NUS/NTU/SMU count foreigners with GCE A-levels/poly diplomas as foreign students.
I think one key factor pertaining to why a foreign university, ranked more prestigeously or not (because ranking does not necessarily equate to better, if I were to be a nitpicker), would take a Singaporean student that NUS/NTU denied a place is in fact money.
I am going to be fresh out of the army (ORD loh!), and I spent the past few months frantically calculating the costs incurred for a tertiary education in Singapore vs. a college in London. Basically speaking, said UK college has international students paying more than 3 times the amount a local student would have to pay. You can take a look on the actual figures here:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/current-stu...n-fees/ug-fees/
As for Singapore (NUS) the figures are as below:
https://team.nus.edu.sg/registrar...ition2006-
7.pdf
Ignoring the differences in exchange rates and just taking the figures at face value, it is quite apparent that international students, besides having to cope with living expenses and all that jazz, have to pay a lot more than a local student. At least, this is the case for the UK. I would, however, postulate this to be the case - more often than not I hear my peers from foreign universities grumble about how much more they have to pay vs. their local counterparts.
An interesting note, however, is that international students in Singapore (NUS - I didn't bother checking up the NTU website) pay only a fraction more than a native student, at least in terms of tuition fees. After including living expenses and all that jazz this amount may increase, but I sincerely doubt it would be to the point where the total amount is more than 3 times that of a native student's costs.
Bottom line: universities earn more from foreign students than from ther own native students. Given that grants and other research funds come from donations or the school themselves, having more foreign students would mean more money, indirectly relating to better performance on the research level. Of course, if NUS were to jack up their prices, I doubt that it would achieve the same effect..
Nonetheless, I believe one key factor why foreign universities would be more willing to take in a Singaporean (beyond giving him the necessarily benefits of doubt, e.g. talents/smarts, etc.) is that they can earn more from said Singaporean. Perhaps the future discussion would like to factor this in?
-Just a passerby
michael:
Thank you for your excellent point. It is something that I am aware of but forgot to put down. Yes, the foreign student pays only 10% more than the local student in NUS/NTU/SMU, unlike in many universities in Britain, Australia, US, Canada, etc. One of the results of the fact that universities are allowed to charge international students a lot more is that they end up having a genuine financial incentive to aggressively recruit them. In this light, it is entirely possible that, say, a US university can make a lot more by accepting the Singaporean student over a comparable native, if the former is paying.
(On this note, people who think that it is unfair that NUS/NTU/SMU are only charging the foreign students 10% but should charge them more should think carefully about possible unintended consequences. That is, if it becomes much more lucrative to take in an international than local student because of a great disparity of fees, then there will be incentive and pressure for NUS/NTU/SMU to focus on attracting international students at the expense of locals. The present fees regime, while apparently 'unfair', is at least conducive to keeping the universities 'disinterested'.)
fox:
Ok, I see what you mean now. But if that is the case, then the situation for the local (native) is even better than the data I presented suggests.
Let me get it straight. So there are really two sorts of foreigners applying to NUS/NTU/SMU. (a) those who apply on the basis of qualifications, including A-Level results, received in another country, and (b) those who apply on the basis of A-Level results received in Singapore, after studying in the JCs here. The numbers for the Local Pool included (b). But it turns out that (b) should not be counted in the Local Intake (total intake minus the 20% set aside for foreigners) at all--if, as you say, NUS/NTU/SMU takes them as international students.
Ok, keep the definition of Local Pool as I defined it (as students who are products of the local system) but define Native Pool as that proportion of the LP that is composed of native Singaporeans.
Since the NP is necessarily smaller (by a little) than the LP, it follows that if the foreigners in (b) are countered among the 20% foreign intake by NUS/NTU/SMU, then the Native Pool to Local Intake ratio is even more favorable than than the Local Pool to Local Intake ratio (Table 3). Not only is it *not* the case that the native students are competing for fewer places for them in NUS/NTU/SMU, it turns out that while places for them have continued to increase even after discounting the 20% international intake, the number of native Singaporean students may well be decreasing or not increasing all that much (most probably due to declining birthrates).
Thank you for pointing this out. I'll see if I can work the point into an update of the post (later in the day though).
Dear writer:
The issue of getting into a local university did cause me a fair amount of trauma. Perhaps I can offer my personal perspective, as a poly graduate who hasn't yet received a rejection letter from any university I have applied to.
In the aftermath of my O Levels, I scored well enough to be admitted to the JC of my parent's choice. When I decided to enter the poly instead, my parents disagreed, my extended family generally disagreed, and everyone thought I was throwing away my future. No one said it straight to my face, but it was all hidden in innuendo.
I shall get to my point. I feel that the general public has an impression that only the best of the best from the poly - the top 5% - should make it to a local university. This thinking has been deeply sowed into our local society that parents, families and the society at large feel that indeed, the polytechnic graduate is the second tier.
No way these second tier products should be allowed to degrade the quality of the first tier in our internationally ranked local universities...
I feel that studies into local university intake patterns should note the fact that many able, willing and qualified applicants from the local polys simply do not get a place in the local universities. The "local pool" should include more then simply 5% of the polytechnic cohort.
In my humble opinion; I am equally humbled by your dedication.
I think there's another factor which we would need to take into account that might give rise to the perception by students that "its getting harder to get into university".
I suspect grade inflation(or perhaps a gradual increase in the academic abilities in each succesive cohort) might have to do with it as well. Assuming the proportion of local students getting into university is constant, an overall improvement of grades in the cohort will necessarily result in a higher cut off point for university admission, hence a grade that could have got you a place five years ago may not make the cut now. Thus the students get the impression that it is harder to get into university.
My point is that the 'local pool' is something like employment statistics for 'residents'. It doesn't discriminate between the real natives and PRs.
Also, you may also wish to gather more carefully the total number of applicants, which may be more than the no. of native A-level holders plus top 5% of poly grads. In the year that the local universities announced that they were accepting more poly graduates, the universities received a record number of applications.
On this note, people who think that it is unfair that NUS/NTU/SMU are only charging the foreign students 10% but should charge them more should think carefully about possible unintended consequences. That is, if it becomes much more lucrative to take in an international than local student because of a great disparity of fees, then there will be incentive and pressure for NUS/NTU/SMU to focus on attracting international students at the expense of locals. The present fees regime, while apparently 'unfair', is at least conducive to keeping the universities 'disinterested'.
Your assumptions:
1. NUS/NTU/SMU either charge 25 percent fee or they charge 100 percent fee. We can have anything in between. For example, NUS/NTU used to charge 50 percent until the government decided to change that in 1997.
2. The block grant that local universities receive will be unchanged even if they decrease the number of local students.
3. Universities have the right to decide the number of locals to take in. In reality, given that MOE is their primary source of funding, they have no such right.
Also, charging foreign students full fees is a recommendation of the University Autonomy, Governance and Funding (UGAF) committee.
Right now, the universities do not care about whether the foreign students pay full fees since MOE foots the bill for them anyway. The minute foreign students pay full fees, you can bet that the universities will see a drastic drop in the number of foreign students.
Rex: Perhaps as a fresh poly grad you could throw more light into the discussion by giving us an idea of how many of your peers/seniors are successful in getting a place in local universities as well as foreign universities. And between local and foreign which one would you prefer to go to?(of course the name of the foreign university is important, hopefully you can provide us some universities that are "popular" with poly grads)
As an overseas student, sometimes I wonder beside the prestige and high quality education a Singaporean gets overseas, have they actually be able to be cross-culturally competent on global norms and values, especially those Singaporeans who come back to be political, bureaucratic and economic leaders?
Take for example the IMF/WB meeting currently. Did people in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Trade and Industry anticipate this situation and had a plan? Is our civil service too dependent on the elected politicans to plan this IMF/WB thing properly? Was it the best decision to have the SAF helped out so much, since SAF of course retains inherant authoritarian and discipline streak?
Since, Singapore sends so many scholars overseas, did these people not know of the consequences of not following global norms and values over freedom of assembly? Do who study at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, London School of Economics or even Beijing University understand that protests are very much a norm of the political process of most countries? Why are they, especially who attest to be cosmopolitian and liberal, keeping so quiet over the situation now? Could these situations of Singapore being put in a bad light from Washington Post to the BBC be avoided in the first place? How come our Straits Times reports are so belligerant against the IMF/WB now when they were so involved in the nation building process of welcoming them in the first place?
Rex:
Thank you for your kind words! I absolutely agree with you that ideally, the local pool "should include more then simply 5% of the polytechnic cohort" in the sense that more than the top 5% of the poly grads should be given a crack at entering NUS/NTU/SMU.
But my calculations was not about what ideally should be the case but what is the case presently, and as far as I know, what presently is the case is that (by government decree rather than by the universities' own choice, as far as I know) only the top 5% of the poly grads are eligible to apply.
My concern was to ascertain that if an eligible applicant *today* (eligible by today's standards) were to make the complaint that his chances of entering NUS/NTU/SMU has been adversely impacted by the influx of foreign students, whether his complaint has any objective basis or not.
Given that this is the question I am trying to answer, the concern you raised, while totally legitimate, is in a sense besides the point--if a good poly graduate student cannot get into NUS/NTU/SMU because he is not in the top 5%, it cannot be because of the influx of foreign students but because of (other) government policies. (But I am hopeful on that front, given the intention to increase the proportion of poly grads going to universities by 2010, and given certain trends in the universities themselves...)
Fox:
Also, you may also wish to gather more carefully the total number of applicants, which may be more than the no. of native A-level holders plus top 5% of poly grads. In the year that the local universities announced that they were accepting more poly graduates, the universities received a record number of applications.
Yes, but in a sense it doesn't matter. First, the local pool as I defined it sets the *upper bounds* per year. Late, repeat, etc., applicants will simply cancel each other out between years. In any case, not every student with 2 A 2 AO is going to make it to NUS/NTU/SMU. Second, that's why I emphasied that the actual number of the Pool is not going to be as important as the trend--the trend of the Pool to Intake ratio over time, especially with 1998 as the watershed (when the decision was made to increase the foreign intake)--are there sharp changes in the ratio before and after that watershed?
At the end of the day, this is ultimately not precise by any standards--statistical or otherwise. There are just too many unknowns. The question is whether something of an impression can at least be generated from the available data. At the very least, I do think that the available data does not support the contention that the influx of foreign students have made it harder for Singaporeans to enter NUS/NTU/SMU, that is: if that did happen, it is not showing up in the available data. This does not prove that it did not happen but at best give us some fallible grounds for thinking that it probably didn't (pending better data).
The point about the poly grads is slightly different. As far as I know, the official policy is still that only the top 5% need apply--or has that already changed? (Again, giving us an upper limit rather than an actual number who would bother to apply.) I would be greatly indebted if you have more information to share.
Incidentally, NUS/NTU/SMU have been receiving record numbers of applications since 2004 because you can now apply to each separately rather than in a "joint-admissions" exercise. But what the Local Pool stands for is the upper bounds of of eligible applicants--people, not the forms they fill up (where by "eligible", I mean very weakly 2A 2AO, 5% of poly, etc.--which means the number of potential applicants that are actually eligible as in actually stand a good chance, will be less than that).
As for the point about fees--my claim has to be taken with the usual caveat: all things being equal. Needless to say, all things are not equal or need not be equal in the world (for instance, the various possibilities you raised). That is, supposed it is true that an university stands to collect a lot more fees (or fees plus subsidies from the government) from one sort of student rather than another, there is then a financial incentive to more aggressively recruit that type of student. This incentive may well be counterbalanced by other considerations, constraints, etc.
On a slightly different note: if NUS starts collecting full fees from foreign student, will the numbers sharply drop? How do we know whether that will be true or not? Or will the Chinese students then be replaced by rich kids from Saudi Arabia or Dubai instead? I really don't know, but I won't assume that the numbers will definitely drop. What if the cut-off for the foreign students is reduced as the fees are increased? ...
Jolly Jester:
Thank you for your note--yes, it is certainly a factor that is worth looking into. Though I have to say that at least for the years when I was an undergraduate (in the mid to late 1990s), the cut offs changed only very marginally from year to year. But it is entirely possible that things are different more recently.
First, I would like to respond to Mr Wang's question,"Why can't their kids be given a place in NUS/NTU/SMU instead? Instead of a foreigner from India or China, heavily subsidised by your and my income tax?"
The answer is can. We can certainly do that, but we will have to accept the fact that the probability that our kids will probably bring down the standards of the universities since the bottom of the barrel is quite jialat now. We're talking about kids who are having trouble just passing and getting a degree. We're not even talking about the kids who are worried about getting A's. It is no secret the foreign students we are taking in are in general better than the average local undergrad.
Of course, people will then argue that we have to give priority to our own people to develop our local talent. The key word here is "late bloomers" and the slogan is "everyone deserves a chance". Good idea, but the question is where do you want to draw the line? Yeah, let's do it French-style and make it seem like it's A RIGHT to go to college. Does it really help? People more familiar with the French system can probably say more. Some people don't have the aptitude to study. They should just go figure out what they are good at doing instead of wasting four years running after a piece of paper that will be worthless for them (or worse spend four years suffering and failing to get that piece of paper).
Mr Wang claims that "Singaporeans (who) cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU, are often accepted into quite respectable universities overseas, ranked comparably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU". Talk is cheap hor. Mr Wang claims "often". How many people that Mr Wang personally knows fall into this category? The KTM would be shocked to find someone who is admitted to Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Stanford who cannot do well enough at the A-Levels to get a place at NUS.
The KTM does have a friend who failed to get a place at NUS Medicine and who was forced to study medicine in Cambridge, UK, but the likely reason is due to some obscure policy of wanting to spread talent out among the various faculties or something like that in the early days. In case the KTM is mistaken, we really aren't talking about such folks, who really can take care of themselves.
Rex's concern about university admission for the polytechnic students is quite valid. The KTM seems no reason why the Universities should have to deal with this magic number. Who can say for sure that the students in the 6th to 10th percentile say of the polytechnic graduates from a given cohort are worse than the worse of the JC/Pre-U kids? There is no logic. Singaporeans should be compared to each other and we should just take the best. If NUS/NTU doesn't know how to compare JC students to poly students, then they better go figure out and MOE shouldn't go an interfere with the admission of students.
Basically, MOE should go and decide out how many college students the Garmen is willing to spend money to train and leave the universities to figure out who they want to accept. Of course, some quotas for locals and foreigners should be maintained for political reasons, lest they get accused of not protecting the locals. There are 1.2 billion Chinese and 1 billion Indians up north. If the universities truly get to choose only the best students they can get their hands on and we do a free-for-all, most of our local kids won't stand a chance. :-(
Since I brought up the point, I think I have more or less some "responsibility" of dealing with the issue of money and its effects on the recruitment of students.
In order to prove (or disprove) the general notion that less foreign students will come to our universities if we charge them full fees, we would have to have a full breakdown of the racial constituition of our current universities, as well as a general demograph of their financial standings, whether they are on scholarship, etc. In other words - it is impossible to accurately predict whether increased fees would repel foreign students from joining our universities.
However, as a general rule of thumb, people tend to go for cheaper goods/services than expensive ones, and depending on the "amount" of quality sacrificed people might be more than willing to let go of high standards when it comes to money. Of course, things like healthcare and, ironically, education cannot be qualified with this rule of thumb all the time, but it is the general basis of the free economy. I'm beginning to ramble, so I assume my point is made.
A number of foreigners would be deterred by a sudden price hike in university fees. This is expected. And this would cause great damage to the image that NUS (at least) is trying to cultivate - that of a world-class, cosmopolitan university, full of diversity and a melting pot of creativity, etc. Couple that with the point that Fox made - that Singapore universities get their funding mainly from MOE (I'm taking this at face value - I do not know if this is truth or not), there is little impetus for Singaporean universities to not give foreign students that "little discount" that they do.
If, as Mr. Loy puts it, the entry requirements were to be reduced, the general reputation of the universities go downhill. As it is our universities cannot attract talents that flock to OxBridge, Harvard, MIT, etc. (An assumption and an assertion - please take it with a pinch of salt) We have to settle with "the next level of creme" who for reasons of their own (postulated reasons being money, proximity to home country, Asian hence close to own roots and culture, etc.) come to Singapore for their tertiary studies. To raise fees while reducing entry requirements would chase away the "2nd level talent" who come here due to financial reasons, and attract "3rd level" or worse, people with little to no talent but with plenty of money. The repute of the NUS/NTU Certificate would fall, as people would eventually see that piece of paper to be "bought" rather than "earned".
The status quo with foreign universities, and how they can attract talent while charging near exorbitant fees for international students, is based on reputation, history, and the general idea that they can churn out talents of a universal calibre. However, it is of my personal opinion that this practice might be slowly phased out, what with China having many universities that are now within world-class level in terms of their education standards. Beijing University comes to mind (reputation anyway). Mr. Wang has also made a previous post on the monetary push factors for going to a Chinese university, so I will not bother to enforce that point.
The reason why I made that last point is because I feel that if the direction for tertiary study will follow that of the current global economy, i.e. cheapest costs with maximum quality (relative to costs), as exemplified by China's universities, I don't see a problem with Singapore taking its current stance of giving foreign students a "discount" for fees. Reduce costs, maximise quality, build reputation, all works good for us. Murphy's Law applies, though. (It's 1am, I just came back from ICT, cut me a break. Heh.)
Wanye - It is ironic that you bring up the point about scholars, overseas, and the lack of sensitivity that the Singaporean government seems to have when it comes to foreign mindsets. The general reply would be that the Singaporean Government *is* the Singaporean Government, and that they have their own "standards" and "ideologies" to follow - they cannot bend to the will of every other person, else will be seen as a yes-country. Regardless, this issue would be best dealt with in another post, and not in a suggestions box. 
Rex - I applaud your suggestion. Sincerely I have met many brilliant people from polytechnics, and I believe it is only right and fair to give these people equal opportunities to pursue their tertiary studies without the stigma attached. But as the word implies, stigmas (or was it stigmata? I forget...) are formed over time. One cannot deny that in the past (80s?) polytechnics were somewhat "demonized" to be the place where people could not make the "fast track to university" were placed. It was unheard of then that people would willingly make their way to polys *by choice* rather than other circumstance like financial worries, need to enter the workforce quickly, or just plain academically disinclined. Nonetheless the current situation has changed, and I do agree, with everyone here I believe, that it is prime time our universities relook their policies. Still, time is needed...
@KTM - actually, I would like to say that there are many cases where local students are rejected by NUS/NTU, but are accepted overseas. A lot of students from my batch got the necessary academic requirements for Medicine in NUS, but were denied the chance of even an interview with the Med Fac. They reapplied abroad, and strangely were given a place. Of course, these scenarios are mostly anecdotal, and thus hard to prove, so I can't say much beyond that.
Also, as Mr. Loy has proven, the entry quotas for foreign students and local are separate. I would think that this method of selection would ensure our local undergrads to "stand a chance"
Thanks for your comments KTM and Michael. Just a quick one students who are turned down by NUS etc., and accepted by some very good universities overseas. I think that the case of Medicine and, to some extent, Law as well, should be treated separately. There are much more stringent quota issues to do with both, thus making it much more likely for the stated scenario to happen. But note that this has nothing to do with foreign students but with the (government enforced) quotas. (I believe that KTM and other bloggers have blogged about the issue of quotas for Law...)
Why can't their kids be given a place in NUS/NTU/SMU instead?
====
Mr Wang,
Economists have long been urging for the current subsidy scheme to be changed into a voucher scheme where every potential university applicant be given one that can be used in any university here and abroad.
This scheme would solve your above problem more efficiently.
But Kelvin, why has it not been implemented widely if it's so good? I am just curious as to the reasons why a 'good' program is not taken up when current arrangements are analysed to be inefficient (allocatively)? Shouldn't the cost-benefit analysis of such a scheme convince any 'right thinking' politician or policymaker?
Kelvin Tan:
"Economists have long been urging for the current subsidy scheme to be changed into a voucher scheme where every potential university applicant be given one that can be used in any university here and abroad.
This scheme would solve your above problem more efficiently."
It's not workable because once you subsidize overseas tertiary studies, more Singaporeans will study overseas and STAY overseas. We'll just be flushing taxpayers' monies down the drain. The point of subsidizing the cost of education is that the graduates will stay on in the country to repay society.
First off, to introduce myself (so you know where I'm coming from), I'm a second generation PR, who was born and educated here. I went through the Pri-Secondary-JC route to become an undergraduate in NTU.
I think in order to analyse the desirability of foreign students (that's what this entire discussion is actually about, right?), I feel that one very important fact that has been left out is, the percentage of foreign students is a VERY big factor in the ranking of the universities by most agencies. I doubt that NUS/NTU et al. care very much about the tuition they can obtain from foreigners, but is more concerned about that top whatever spot, which they keep trumpeting. I heard, anecdotally, that NUS/NTU's ranking is very nearly solely due to this.
In my experience, contrary to what KTM says, the foreign pool is not pulling up standards. I can sincerely say that they aren't much better than your average Poly grad when it comes to intelligence (maybe you should never ask me, as I also feel the average poly grad is far more interesting and intelligent than the average JC student). In fact, I felt far more challenged by my peers academically in my JC (one of the mediocre ones, too)! But one thing I do like about them, is the fact that most of them dare ask 'potentially silly' questions! It doesn't help that, you can't even compare the incoming quality of the LP and the FP. As Huicheh pointed out, they are not even judged on the same set of numbers as the local intake. Let's not even talk about how an 'A' in say, Indonesia is different from an 'A' in Vietnam, an 'A' in the PRC, and an 'A' in Singapore.
I believe that the 'foreign student' issue is one of numbers and looking good on paper. This is a sad, sad reflection of the general Singaporean inability to distinguish cause-and-effect in statistics. Foreign students will flock to you if you are good, yes, but you aren't good just because you have many foreign students (which you bribed to come over). The worst thing (the source of much discontent), is that it comes at an opportunity cost of another Singaporean in that place.
To nitpick, I don't think you can say that it is any easier or harder to get into a local university from the figures, but one is more *likely* to get into university compared to the past, regardless of foreign students. Easiness or hardness, perhaps, has more to do with the number of hoops and the amount of effort required for a student to clinch that elusive university place. That is far harder to quantify, but my gut feeling is that it is harder compared to the past, and foreign students have nothing to do with it.
I just had a thought after reading RSE's post above, the figures from 1992-1995 (See Table 3), would they be affected by the stringent second language requirement for entry into the universities compared to the period from 1996 onwards?
ted:
the short answer to your question (re: second language requirement) is "no". As far as I know, the "mother tongue" requirements never did affect more than 2% of the applicants. But I'll need to look up some figures. Nonetheless, whatever the reason, it does seem much harder to get into NUS/NTU in the past (early 1990s and before).
All:
Thank you for your comments (Kevin, fox, RSE). I'll respond to them later (needed to cook dinner now...)
Kevin:
Do you have sources for any proposed or hypothetical (education) voucher system for Singapore? Or perhaps someone else who might know. I would be greatly obliged. (I only know of the American version.)
But as Fox points out, it seems strange to subsidise overseas education... (not that the current system does not do so, but mostly in the form of a scholarship with bonds...)
RSE
You've made a good point about "harder/easier" vs. "more likely/less likely". Absolutely, whatever data I have only points in the latter, but not in the former direction, except perhaps very indirectly. I guess I should be clearer about that.
Nonetheless, I guess you would agree that if the "hardness" is meant to be related to the influx of foreign students, then it is still the case that it has not become "harder" to get to NUS/NTU/SMU *because* of the influx of foreign students in the specific sense that--as far as we can tell from the data--the influx of foreign students has not adversely affected the *chances* (a.k.a. "likelihood") for a local to enter NUS/NTU/SMU. This conclusion is compatible with the claim that the local might well have to *work* much harder than his predecessors to get into NUS/NTU/SMU...
On the hardness (amount of effort) of getting into the Univ's. Yes, the impression is that it has become harder--but not completely because of what is happening at the University level, but in the education system as a whole. As far as I can tell, it's not that NUS/NTU/SMU have been raising the bar, but that the average workload of the student in the Singapore school system has been increasing over time...
re: the point about ranking. Not all of the rankings in which NUS/NTU do well put much weight upon the percentage of foreign students. For instance, Asiaweek's ranking of the universities in Asia (NUS: 6). The one that you are referring to will have to be the one by Times Higher Education Supplement (NUS: 18 in 2004, 22 in 2005/6?), which has more recently made it explicit that their ranking is really about who are the most "global" universities.
But note that the decision to go full steam to aggressively recruit foreign students goes back to 1997/1998, upon the recommendation of the IAAP. That's way before there was a Times Higher Education Supplement "World Universities Ranking".
So while you are right that NUS/NTU/SMU are not in this game for the cash (though don't rule that out in the long run), it isn't a simple matter of "ranking" either, but a more sophisticated and strategic version of that. Something about that was mentioned by then PM Goh in the 1999 ND Rally Speech (see this. And what I can say is that, from personal knowledge, NUS is quite serious about making a bid for "world class", and by that, I don't mean just "ranking".
"Mr Wang claims that "Singaporeans (who) cannot get a place in NUS, NTU or SMU, are often accepted into quite respectable universities overseas, ranked comparably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU". Talk is cheap hor. Mr Wang claims "often". How many people that Mr Wang personally knows fall into this category? The KTM would be shocked to find someone who is admitted to Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Stanford who cannot do well enough at the A-Levels to get a place at NUS."
KTM:
Actually, many Singaporeans who study law at Cambridge and Oxford are rejects from NUS Law Faculty. But that's not the point. It's hardly necessary to use the likes of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Stanford to make the point I was making.
For eample, if you look at these rankings:
http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2006/
...006_TopAsia.htm
... you'll see that NUS is ranked 10th-19th; NTU is ranked joint 41st-63rd. ANU and University of Melbourne are ranked better than NUS/NTU; while Univ Queensland, Univ Sydney, Univ Western Australia share the same ranking as NUS; other universities such as Macquarie University and Monash University and University of Otago are ranked lower than NUS but higher than NTU.
These are all universities which "rank comfortably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU". They also happen to be very popular destinations for NUS rejects - they all have sizeable communities of Singaporean students, and not of the "I scored 4A's and 2 S-Paper distinctions" variety.
My previous question then arises again - about the long-term financial implications for our society.
Dear Jolly Jester:
I would not exactly consider myself a fresh poly grad. I have completed NS and am in my second year of uni, and currently on international exchange in New York. I am pursuing accountancy at SMU.
I hesitate to give concrete figures since I do not have them. Of my classmates in poly, I would make an educated, conservative guess that a quarter immediately pursued further education. However, I only know another classmate who was accepted to NTU - everyone else is either overseas in Australia or the UK, or studying in Singapore on an external program - for example University of London External.
Don't read into my experience as substantiative evidence, for it isn't - for instance, my intake for that diploma had a cut off point that comfortably exceeded 20.
With regards to which universities are popular for poly grads:
I did not apply to the more popular Australian universities, which I found out to be, after researching my options, the Australian institutions that gave generous advanced standing. (obviously) For example, I would merely need nine months to complete my degree at some institutions! I hesitate to name these institutions, but I will say that they are not the reputable long-standing institutions of Australia.
I read with interest the comments debating if indeed Singaporeans were affected or even denied placement because of foreign students. Being currently on exchange and playing the role of a foreign student, I do frequently ask myself what are the merits of actually choosing to remain in Singapore, and with each passing week the decision I made seems to be less and less justified. Anyway, this is getting off topic =)
Dear Writer:
Quote: "...as far as I know, what presently is the case is that (by government decree rather than by the universities' own choice, as far as I know) only the top 5% of the poly grads are eligible to apply...."
When I applied to the local universities, I was not informed of any official ruling that limited the applicant pool to the top 5%. I do not believe such a ruling exists.
I may be mistaken, but I believe it is a misconception founded on the (incorrect) belief that the top 5% of the poly cohort receives a certificate of merit - and you need one to be eligible to apply for the local universities.
I have two observations to share - firstly, I did not receive a certificate of merit and I was accepted to all three local universities. (I believe I was admitted based on my non-academic credentials and SAT score, which was then used as a metric for admission) Secondly, the certificate is not given to the top 5% anyway - it is given out at the arbitrary discretion of the polytechnic, regardless of class ranking, which is by the way, not published.
The net effect is that it is rarely given. In my (probably very biased) opinion, it is a meaningless award as the method of which it is conferred seems to be little more then at the whim and fancy of senior lecturers. This may not be the situation at all polytechnics, but certainly was my experience at my institution.
Rex:
re: the top 5% from poly intake. I've always worked on the assumption that only the top 5% need apply, but now that you've pointed this out, this may not be a warranted assumption after all! One thing though: it has become more possible to get accepted at NUS/NTU/SMU on the basis of "non-academic credentials and SAT score" than before. The universities do appear to be moving away from an older one-size-fit all simple cutoff type of evaluation. It might just be possible that there was a "5% policy" (however it is calculated, determined) in an earlier era. I hope to be looking more closely into this matter. (Thank you very much.)
I ran the calculations again but this time calculating the "Local Pool" as all the 2A 2AO plus (unrealistically) all the poly grads. The results are interesting. The Local Pool to Local Intake ratio over time now becomes, from 1992 to 2006 (the older calculation using the 5% rule in parenthesis following):
1992 - 22% (63%)
1993 - 24% (73%)
1994 - 26% (78%)
1995 - 25% (75%)
1996 - 27% (86%)
1997 - 27% (87%)
1998 - 25% (85%)
1999 - 25% (84%)
2000 - 25% (83%)
2001 - 24% (80%)
2002 - 24% (80%)
2003 - 24% (82%)
2004 - 24% (81%)
2005 - 24% (91%)
2006 - 23% (84%)
The last two numbers (for 2005 and 2006) are based upon estimations of the number of poly grads given average growth since 1992.
Not sure what to make of it though; tentatively, except for the peak of 1994-1997, the ratio seems to have been stable at 22-24%. (Note also that the A-Level batches for 1994-1998 were smaller than other years.)
Mr. Wang, KTM
The example of the law students studying in the UK is not as useful as it might appear at first sight. For whatever reason, Law and Medicine have always had quotas. In fact, Lawyers and Doctors have always had good cause to make sure that there are quotas and other sundry restrictions to free entry--it keeps their wages up by restricting supply. On the other hand, if a local student is turned down by NUS FASS but accepted into OxCam PPE, then there might be something more to the thing. But even then, for the reasons I have already stated above, I would *not* be "shocked" at all to find someone who is admitted to Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Stanford who cannot do well enough at the A-Levels to get a place at NUS, though I would be mildly surprised if the *majority* of those who applied and are turned down by NUS/NTU/SMU are able to get into such places.
But leaving that aside, and assuming the validity of the Jiaotong Daxue rankings you linked (after all, NUS ranks higher than ANU on the THES ranking; but really, these are only rankings--*all* have their biases and assumptions), since NUS is in the 10th-19th, NTU in the 41st-63rd, and SMU not even ranked, it seems a tad lax to lump NUS, NTU and SMU together and talk about universities that are "rank comfortably or even better than NUS, NTU or SMU". The mere fact that lots of Australian universities in the 1-63 slot have "sizeable communities of Singaporean students" even if it is also the case that many of these students are NUS rejects (I would love to see some data though) is not going to say very much. Rather, your point would be better made if, say, lots of students get turned down by NUS but accepted by other universities in the 1-19 slot, and NTU vs. other universities in the 1-63 slot. SMU is not even in the game, on this ranking.
In other words, your point would be better made if, focusing only on NUS, there are lots of NUS rejects in ANU, Melbourne, Queensland, Sydney and UWA; lots of such students in UNSW, Macquarie, Monash, Adelaide, etc., on the other hand, would not be as interesting a point to make.
Furthermore, once you make the point in terms of universities that "rank comfortably with NUS..." rather than those that are clearly ranked much better (in the JTDX ranking, only ANU and Melbourne belong in that category), then the point becomes much more iffy. There's no mystery to the fact that comparable universities sometimes make apparently disparent evaluations. There's no irony there, only the vagaries of life as it is.
This is not to say that I don't believe that there is something to the point you are making about financial burden.
Regarding the voucher scheme, I guess I gave the wrong impression that there are economists in Singapore urging for it, which is clearly not the case. Thus, Hui Chieh, there are no such examples, sorry!
But I am confident that, if we are focusing on efficiency, almost all mainstream economists would prefer a voucher scheme, where the student is given the subsidy, compared to the current "fixed-quantity" subsidy, where the university gets the subsidy depending on how many students it enrols.
To answer Ted, politicians are not too concerned about efficiency. Fox is right in the sense that, giving the subsidy may make the student choose an overseas education. I don't want to go into all those details here, interested readers can read what I wrote on this issue several years ago here
http://www.geocities.com/kelvint...les/
voucher.htm
Agree with the point about NUS Law/Medicine. I would not even have mentioned it if KTM had not brought it up. Note my own preface - "But that's not the point. It's hardly necessary to use the likes of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, MIT, Princeton or Stanford to make the point I was making."
Recently there was an ST article about how the number of S'pore students attending Australian universities have been falling since 2000. The ST article attributed this to the rising standard of local tertiary education such that Singaporeans felt a need to go overseas for their undergrad studies.
Heheh. The ST article conveniently forgot to mention that SMU was set up in 2000. At that time, its intake was very small, since it was a new universitym and had to share, IIRC, the campus of NIE or something like that. Since then it has expanded rapidly year after year and gotten new campus grounds and its student intake has also increased sharply. I sense a direct correlation between SMU's expansion and the reduction of S'pore students going to Aussie universities - do you?
On a separate point, I don't think it is lax of me to lump NUS, NTU and SMU together. After all, these are the Singapore universities. I have no doubt that many Singaporeans applying for a university place would apply to one or both or all three of NUS, NTU and SMU. And I have no doubt that a significant number of Singaporeans go overseas only because they have applied and failed to get a place in at least two of the three institutions.
Wayne,
Most of the scholars sent out by the government tend to stick to the Singaporean groups/societies and they rarely interact with the foreigners. At least, I have not seen a scholar in the UK who is heading the top student socieities or union positions. Sometimes, I really wonder why all the agencies send these people who are so insulated and not outgoing. I was not surprised by the lack of sensitivity in their response to the NGOs and activities.
Of course, that's my five cents worth.
This is getting off Huichieh's topic but I can't resist responding to BL's comment.
IMHO I think Sg gov scholars tend to not get involved too deeply with the top student union positions because (1) some of them, at least in the UK, are full-time positions which require a student to take a year off studies to do the union work full-time - no scholarship board is going to approve that; (2) more importantly many of the UK university-level student unions are stepping stones for aspiring politicians in the UK to build their contacts and CVs, if you peruse the bios of UK MPs (http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/
alms.cfm), quite a few started out in their political careers in student unions. One of them I know personally is Jo Swinson (http://www.joswinson.org.uk/). It's a matter of turf as well as Singapore gov scholars not wanting to dabble in foreign politics.
re: foreign students debate, it's interesting to note that UK universities like the LSE, SOAS, UCL, Imperial like to boast about their high percentage of foreign students as a marketing point in their recruitment literature - the assumption is that this shows them to be diverse, open and attractive to people of all kinds of nationalities. I would assume that this is something that NUS/NTU/SMU might be trying to create through increased foreign student recruitment.
Ringisei,
Same here, but I also cannot resist after reading Wayne's earlier comment. I suppose we have to find somewhere to continue this discussion or I might have to write a seperate post on this issue.
Let me clarify the point that I made about joining societies. I did mention the union and I am aware of the sabbatical year for the president. I will use Cambridge, UK as an example, since I am most familiar with students there. 99% of the SG scholars from the civil service and will often try to take up leadership in the Cambridge University Malaysia & Singapore Association (CUMSA). Of course, I can understand the need to join that organization, after if you are the former president of CUMSA, you will find yourself getting a easy move to politics in Singapore.
How about the other societies which do not require the sabbatical? For example, the Cambridge University Industrial Society (CUIS) is a top-notched business society that might help a DBS scholar or a EDB scholar to build up industry or investment banking contacts. The lack of exposure to different culture is clearly the point that I am driving at. I think that the civil service scholars should expose themselves more to other interest groups and get a sense of things around them, instead of sitting around among themselves and talk about food all day. The classical excuse I am aware from all of them is that they need to get their first.
Mr Wang:
I would also like to add that another significant reason (significant in my opinion at least) for the falling numbers of SG students applying to study in AUS is due to the currency exchange. Prior to 2000, it was still very inexpensive for SG students to study in AUS.
A primary reason why I chose to study in Melbourne as opposed to the UK, despite the extra 1 year for a law degree and more stringent requirements to practice back in SG, was because at the time I applied (in 2002 I think) the exchange rate was still favourable to the SG dollar. It was apparent by that time however that the AUD was already strengthening against the SGD.
And as it stands now, the rate between the SGD and the AUD now and in 2002 is completely opposite.
Dear BL and Ringsei,
Thanks for your comments. While personal preference for groups of friends and leadership positions is of one issue, the internalization or at least basic understanding of global norms and values should have manifested itself in overseas students is yet another.
For example, many of our political and business elites come from schools such as Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School, Stanford Business School, LSE Graduate Schools or even National University of Singapore (now supposedly a global university) etc. I do not believe that they do not interact with other people of other origins, at least on a professional basis where they have to socially network and go for projects. We all take classes in universities, especially Singaporeans. Surely, tjere are not many professors with authoritarian inclinations in top universities?
While public policy and business schools make no claim to teaching universal human rights or universal professional business ethics beliefs (if there is such a thing in the first place), it is hard to believe that an American/British/Japanese paradigm of free speech, tolerance of each other beliefs, being able to debate in a professional and civil manner and respect for civil rights are not impressed upon these students from Singapore.
Even at a purely undergraduate level, it is purely unthinkable for anyone not to have ANY knowledge of the local politics situation. For example, in the recent student protests against tuition hikes in England, can any Singaporean student in England say they do not know ANYTHING about the protests? Did they see the English political system collapse because of such a protest?
Of course, when they come back to Singapore, they might have to readily put on the straightjacket to please their superiors in the civil service or the party.
But they should also know there is an alternative; the civil servant serves the government and not the party wishes; an individual should be honest himself or herself not to condone injustice and explicitly articulate that. While of course the majority in the organization or superior might override one's decision, ultimately isn't it true to some extent we are all and can work towards being accountable to our own moral and social conscience in the first place?
Yes, it might sound idealistic but is it true you can't have your cake and eat it? Must there be a trade off between economic prosperity and respect for civil and political rights?
On one hand, we complain gahmen too authoritarian, don't let foreigners protest. On another hand, we make noise when gahmen opens country's doors a little wider than what our comfort zone allows.
We are truly Siaah-poreans - complain kings and queens. :P
There are many competent students who are not allowed for an university education but hav to go overseas to complete it which make them incuring a large amount of debt.
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