Well said!

There are so many Malaysian going down under for education. So much so that these Uni have been flourishing in malaysia for years! There are even at least 2 Australian institution in such remote Sarawak!!! How do they Malaysia Boleh but Singapore-tak-boleh? I believe we always think others think the same like us…Singapore is safe….This doesnt sell well to our 3rd world neighbour cos safety is not an issue since its more dangerous from where they came front.I understand quite a numnber of foreign student from the region, esp indonesia willing to go to remote boring dangerous sarawak!

Maybe, EDB believe should not drum up all the shangri-la like city-state. Basically, you are selling a product similar to what our neighbour sells. No 3rd world consumer will go Orchard shopping mall to buy something that Chinatown also sell but at a cheaper price!

EDB got this wrong. EDB or some similar agency, I believe, also got the Creative product wrong(correct me if I’m wrong) sometime back. EDB and those ’scholar’ people that the gov’t paid highly, seems to be paying a huge error and at an alarming rate!

We seems to be trailing our neighbour thesre days instead of the other way round! Are we running out of idea, concept, strategic move?

Is it time to be humble instead of arrogant? Is it time of crying foul when times gets tough? Is it time to stop telling our competitor ‘lets win-win’ when our competitor knows we running out of trump card?

Honestly, sometime, I wonder if the decision maker are in this world! They seems to be disconnect with reality and with the people!

I bet, both IR & F1 will be in most people radar. Every blip will sent the people more headache. Ever failure potentially will affect the GST or taxes to afford any failure!

Stay tune to the ground and not at cloud nine!This is 2007 not 30 years before.

Mat salleh Oh-leh!

It is especially embarrassing for Singapore and frustrating for the students that were left in the lurch.

The whole closure episode was NOT at all done in a graceful and proper manner, there were no advance notice either by UNSW or EDB or MOE. One cannot blame the university for closing shop if the host country is too rigid in its policies.

Singapore is proud to be till date one of the safest countries in the world, thanks to the vision of dedicated leaders of the past and some of the present. Going forward, it is worrisome as it appears that nothing matters so long there is “BIG BUCKS” to be made or at least “think so”.

Big fanfare is the order of the day when it is launched, but surprisingly the very same people involved in the fanfare shy away when something goes wrong.

Grow up policy makers, yes, we have some very intelligent policy makers but there are signs that some are proving to be “INTELLIGENT IDIOTS”.

Every Ministry seems to be driven by only one factor “$$$$$$”.They seem to try to outdo one another for that. Yes, we need to look into the “$$$$$$” but lets do our homework well and always “ANTICIPATE” what can go wrong. What looks good on paper may turn out to be a disaster on the ground.

(An example, ask an uneducated experienced vehicle mechanic to strip an engine part and compare to a degree holder in vehicle mechanic and you will be surprise that the uneducated one does it in a jiffy because he is “street smart” NOT book smart hence the phrase “There are certain things they don’t teach in Harvard”).

It is hope that valuable lessons be learned as a result of these “Boo Boo”.
Let’s not be too arrogant and spend some time digesting others views even the not too INTELLIGENT PEOPLE who may just touch on a critical issue and in the process alert the INTELLIGENT policy makers.

No efforts should be spared to assists the students that were left in the lurch and all parties to really acknowledge their mistakes,improve on it and move on.

The appropriate policy response may be a variant of school vouchers, where the subsidy on higher education goes directly to university students, who are then able to apply the vouchers to their designated school of choice, be it a local university, foreign entrant, or overseas university. This of course would not apply to nonresidents, but AFAIK nonresidents do not enjoy the subsidies on local universities either so there would not be any distorted incentive structure with regard to them in the first place. This would level the playing field.

As for the idea of the education hub, perhaps they have underestimated that the primary draw of an overseas education is the idea of going Somewhere Else.

China attracted the best in the world to flock there. Is China safer, cleaner and ideal in terms of infrastructure? Is the more viable economy a bigger draw?

I’m all for private schools, but I think we need to reassess the role we want them to play in our educational system. We need to rethink our mental paradigms about education before we can restart the private school debate in a meaningful fashion.

Our primary premise is that private schools are still a ’second chance’, the implication being we expect them to have lower standards. If we embark on our ‘global schoolhouse’ policy with this mentality, we’re setting ourselves up to create a ‘global dumpinground’. If someone flunks out of the ‘mainstream’ O level/A level routes, how is letting them do exactly the same course at an exponentially higher price going to solve his problem?

We need to focus on growing the diversity of educational methodologies Singapore can offer, not create ever increasing ways of doing the same thing. The key is to create choice and diversity, not water down quality to hit bureacratic targets.

At the heart of this problem is an assumption that underlines the Singaporean system: that the only route to success is based on scholastic merit. Educational success is defined by scholastic merit: we automatically prize academic or professional degrees over vocational ones.

Until we redifine success in education, we’re never going to be a world class schoolhouse.

I agree. I think some heads need to role. Who in EDB is responsible for this fiasco? The EDB lame duck lady named Aw who looked nervous (she was pouring some water to drink) at the televised press-conference has to answer some of these tough questions. I think EDB must be more transparent in the process they employ to get UNSW here and the ones at the helm of this project should be kicked out! I wonder how much Aw is drawing… these lame ducks are paid so well and yet come up with little more than shit!

Krokus

Singapore’s high cost structure & stagnant domestic economy kills off any hope of becoming an “educational hub”. After the John Hopkins Hospital and Warwick University hubris, this is becoming so predictable. What’s next? IR? F1?

First, UNSW $26k-$29k p.a. fees are beyond most Singaporean families which should be UNSW’s main captive market. Without this, UNSW would need more foreign students to make the shortfall. This is indicative of the domestic income disparity in Spore. So what if the powers to be get paid their global salaries. All their grandiose plans fall to dust on implementation! In time, the failures would be so glaring it would be embarrassing!

Second, most foreign students prefer to go to the real McCoy i.e. Kensington campus than UNSW Spore as there is virtually no difference in fees & living costs. However, the quality of life in Australia vis-a-vis Spore is vastly different. No surprise then the intake is 50% below the expected number. UNSW can’t meet the 20k target in 2020 with such an inauspicious start!

Third, campus infrastructure in Changi South will be a white elephant. Without the attraction of a brandname varsity, it is a waste of taxpayer’s money! The use of an existing school building or the old Bukit Timah campus would have been more realistic.

In short, whoever in EDB that thought out this business collaboration ought be taken out & shot by a firing squad! Any good business planner would have seen through these problems.

NT

You said – Your choice: total government control over education or continuing to allow private enterprise to give second chances.

This is typical false choice fallacy much like Bush’s idiotic “you are for us or you are against us”. We can have some government egulation AND thriving private enterprise… We can have good and smart government intervention and UNSW is one such case. It is new, it needs nurturing. Why did the EDB reject the scaled down version at least for now since it has just started? Of course the UNSW has miscalculated by the government has committed a big booboo on this one. Now, other universities would be shaking in their pants. If more effort to save UNSW is done, maybe, UNSW would be able to make a more dignified exit in a couple of years… that is if things do not pick up which they could if there is an initial scale down and more efforts at taking in students…very possible as more than 700 did apply and only 150 was accepted in the first place. Shame on EDB and the Singapore government! How can we seriously say that we want to be an education hub if at the first sign of difficulty we abandon ship?

Krokus

I agree with you that there are many advantages of having private schools to complement the government driven “straight-jacket” education system.

However in this case I think the theonlinecitizen highlights a valid point about the risk of having too little supervision on private schools, in the EDB’s relentless pursuit of certain milestone targets.

There are cases of private schools closing down and not fulfilling their service obligations after fees have been paid.

And some dubious “schools” have used their licenses to get student passes for pretty girls from China and Vietnam to study the art of entertaining guests in KTVs.

Now the internationally reknown UNSW closes after less than one semester – have the students paid one semester of fees for nothing? You either have a degree or no degree – having one quarter of a degree is worth nothing. If the students can’t go to Australia to continue their studies or transfer their credits somewhere, it is literally money down the drain. What if a foreign student came to Singapore to study at UNSW, and his/her family had saved up just enough to send the person here?

And the thing about the education sector (as compared to some other consumer goods and services) is that quite substantial fees are usually paid upfront before any service is rendered. In Singapore we have pretty strict rules for buying and selling cars, houses, unit trusts and insurance. What about education?

So while we want to build an “education hub”, while we want to make it easier for private educational institutions to set up shop and while we want to make it easier for foreign students to study here – Surely, some “QC” is in order.

Rgds

Boboshoot

Foreign universities, Malaysia campus
=====================================
Curtin University of Technology Sarawak Campus
Monash University Malaysia Campus
Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus
University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus

University Colleges
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Asia Pacific University College of Technology & Innovation (UCTI)
Binary University College
University College
INTI International University College (INTI-UC)
International University College Of Technology Twintech (IUCTT)
Kuala Lumpur Infrastructure University College (KLIUC)
Limkokwing University College of Creative Technology
Sunway University College
Taylor’s University College
University College Sedaya International (UCSI)
Cosmopoint International College University
University College of Technology & Management Malaysia (KUTPM)

As for unreliable schools, they have always been there and there will always be new ones. The competition also forces them to play on the edge – when I was working in the sector, a third of the fees went to the lecturers and another third for training premises – leaving a third for administrative fees, certification fees by the overseas university, and profit.

If you want the government to play big brother and regulate the schools, you’re going to have to face the fact that costs will go up and entry standards will too. Traditionally, most private schools keep costs to a minimum (the pay is bad for anybody except fresh grads) and try to keep the course length to a minimum because the longer and more expensive the course is, the harder for working people to complete the course.

Regulation of private schools also means that if you fail the government system like I did, there will no longer be a affordable private second chance to get qualifications within Singapore. Only if you can afford to fly off to Australia or America, can you get a second chance in life. I have quite a few friends who failed out of school but came back through your much despised unregulated private school system. Some even made it to government jobs!

Your choice: total government control over education or continuing to allow private enterprise to give second chances.

Slow the Singapore ‘Failure’