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What they can do, our local students can do too. If not, we have thousands of overseas students who took off for Australia because they can’t enter local colleges. Our government needs to have more faith in our people!

I rather spend the money to attract more graduate-level students than those undergraduate youngsters and then try to bond these mature graduates to some government organization while they are doing their PHD or MS.

The hike in school fees for non-citizens apply only to PRC students who accompany their mothers here to study and not to the scholars.

Are you a local graduate ? If you had been to NUS Comp Science campus, you will mistake it for a Little China or India !

I wonder how many of these PRC scholars stay back and make Singapore their homes after their bonds end and how many jobs they have deprived locals of.

Anyway, it’s another great article again from TOC !

Cheers !

btw, many of e discoveries attributed to Athens was more e result of plundering e libraries of other city-states they attacked. dun forget also, tt the Spartans fought off streams of invaders, be they Persians or Romans. Athens’ survival was bought with e blood of Sparta.

RH:
1. If you accept my premise of Singaporean identity being formed from Shared Common Experiences, as I wrote in Comment 2 in : http://theonlinecitizen.com/2008/02/20/knowledge-based-economy-needs-more-uni-education-financing/#comments
then it follows that a White Horse like LHL IS NOT A SINGAPOREAN BUT ALMOST A FOREIGNER. LHL’s entire life and career from young have been so different from the rest of us [and many of his ilk, too, including LIE KY] that he and his ilk have little Shared Common Experiences like the rest of us, and hence they are not really Singaporeans. They are Foreigners! This may explain why they are capable of such cruelty, callousness and stinginess; why they have absolutely no empathy with the rest of us or think our lives, interests, hopes and dreams important — only their failed policies and egos are important and these take precedence over anything for the masses of us.

2. If you agree with my premise of SCE, then it also follows that SCE is a 2-way process in which a foreigner not only becomes more and more Singaporean with more and more SCE, but it also means that HE ALSO CHANGES US EVEN AS WE CHANGE HIM. Thus, if our ‘culture’ is weak or his culture is strong, then our numerical superiority may not change him as much as he can change some of us, at least those with whom he interacts or can communicate with or has reach over.

3. Talking about numerical superiority, with 1 in 4 of the population foreigners, our ‘culture’ is in danger of being swamped by all these foreigners’ cultural baggage that they inevitably bring with them. Thus, the nature of Singapore is rapidly changing with the massive imports of foreigners. Singapore may not remain Singaporean for long. Maybe it is already too late.

4. All these points are beyond the little minds of the LIE KY LHL PAP LIEgime since they only know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Such considerations are way, way out of their ken and their so-called ‘technocrat’ tendencies, ‘technocrat’ defined boastfully as almost ’scientific’ and therefore ‘unemotional-based’, which they deride as ‘unscientific’ and therefore inferior. They have been and are totally wrong. The result is a Sparta instead of an Athens.

5. Singapore is Sparta while Hongkong is Athens. Sparta was militaristic. Boys were encouraged to grow strong and joined the army as soon as they were old enough. Today, Sparta has left nothing behind. Athens, on the other hand, gave the world many achievements, from politics, science and mathematics, especially geometry, music, drama, philosophy, poems, writings and musings on a diversity of subjects, all of which even scholars today delve into fruitfully.

6. Singapore, like Sparta, is leaving nothing behind and nothing of value to the human race. This is the legacy of LIE KY and probably the most damning indictment of his [mis]rule.

I’ve blogged about Singaporean students subsidising foreign scholars here.

Aygee – I think your hypothesis is probably right. But whether China people and Indian nationals will integrate well into S’pore society has yet to be seen.

Just to add, looking the economic history of the Republic of Ireland, they faced various economic problems in the 1970s and 1980s.

So governments since then have implemented various policies to restructure the economy. One of their cornerstone policy on education was free university for their citizens especially in the areas of engineering and technology.

Today Ireland is well known as the “Tiger” economy of the EU with the best performing average annual GDP growth for the past 10 years.

To play devil’s advocate, the MOE does require foreign students to pay more in some aspects. Such as:

Donation to Education Fund:

A foreign student is requested to make biennial donations (that is, once every two years) to the Education Fund of the Ministry of Education if his/her application to study in Singapore is approved.

Foreign students are requested to make the biennial donations of S$1,000 within the period stated in the Letter of Donation.

The biennial donations replace the previous donation rates ($3,000 for Malaysians and $5,000 for other nationalities) which were requested once at the primary education level and once at the secondary education level.

———————-

In the recent hike in tuition fees for NUS and NTU:

Foreign students on tuition grant bond will pay 50 per cent more, or $9,540, while Singapore PR will pay 10 per cent more, or $7,000. Foreign students and PRs not on a tuition grant bond will pay $23,320 a year.

———————-

Singapore revises school fees for non-citizens:

From next year (2007), permanent residents (PRs) in government-aided schools, junior colleges and centralised institutes will have to pay about 20% more for school fees.

Foreign students, whose fees are already higher than those for citizens and PRs, will have their fees increased by about 30%.

With the revisions, a Singaporean in a government- or government-aided secondary school will continue to pay $60 a year in school fee but a PR will pay $72.

A foreign student from an ASEAN country will pay $1,860 while foreigners from other countries will pay $2,040, both up from the current $1,560.

As foreign students’ fees in ITE are currently significantly lower than those in schools and JCs, the increase will bring them closer, says the MOE.

For the universities, currently PRs in the autonomous universities pay the same tuition fees as citizens while foreign students pay fees that are 10% more than citizens.

From the academic year 2008, PRs will have to pay fees that are 10% more than citizens.

For foreign students, fees will be 50% higher than those for citizens.

———————-

Of course, the above changes do not belittle the concerns of Singaporeans like Zhou Zhiqiang.

yes, its quite distressful to read that article about Chinese FT getting a better break than locals.

I have a conspiracy theory.

Smart Singaporean Chinese are leaving the country, and quite possibly, smart Singaporean Chinese are not producing enough babies.

Thus the breaks to Chinese FTs in universities is to maintain the Chinese majority in Singapore? MM Lee has been very “pragmatic” about his race statements in the past and maintaining the Chinese majority…

so…could this theory be true?

Do we know whether similar programs are done for Indian nationals? or Thai? or Filipino? or Aussie or American?

HELP GRADS WHO DO AS WELL AS FOREIGN TALENT

Recently, I befriended a group of scholars from China studying at my alma mater, Nayang Technological University (NTU). They were in their late teens and were attending foundation courses in English and Maths before starting their undergraduate studies. In their five-year sojourn at NTU, they will be given free lodging and a month allowance of $500 each. Needless to say, they do not have to pay for their tuition fees. When they graduate, they must work in Singapore for six years as part of their “payback” bond.

A highly conservative calculation of their five-year tenure at NTU suggests that each will cost the Goverment or NTU some $70,000. That is, $30,000 for their five-year tuition fees, including the charges for their foundation courses, and some $40,000 for hostel accommodation and their montly stipends. I graduated from NTU five years ago, with a good honours degree.

I was in the top 15 per cent of my cohort – and performed better than some of these scholars. While studying at NTU, I had to work as a pizza delivery boy to earn my allowance. Upon graduation, I had to start paying off a $24,000 – student loan.

Why are Singaporeans like me not treated as considerately as scholars ? My study loan took five years to pay off after I started working. The China scholars receive financial support, a free education, and start their working lives debt free. Their six-year bond is seen as a contribution to Singapore.

Am I not contributing as much, if not more? Non-scholar Singaporeans are not treated in quite the same way as foreign tale, regardless of how well we perform. The disparity is disheartening.

Don’t Singaporeans like me who have done well deserve some relief ? True, Local scholarships are available, but not ever Singaporean who graduated well, gets one.

Can the NTU or the Education Ministry tell me why graduates like myself don’t deserve some relief or reward for doing as well, or better than, some of the foreign talent ?

Zhou Zhiqiang ….

Dr.Huang

Dr Huang – Tax break for the rich…hmmm…my capitalist side says ‘why not’, but assuming we don’t end up with $7bn surpluses every year, funds are limited and we might have to make a choice between investing in education and giving tax breaks to the rich.

RH – Thanks for the consistent support.

http://www.taisha.org/bbs/thread-856435-1-1.html

I also disagree that universities should primarily be about professional instruction than academic research. I think in every university, there has to be a healthy mix of both. Academic research, even if esoteric at times, is important because it generates knowledge and alternative viewpoints, which help improve the well-being of society-at-large. Such improvements may not be quantifiable in pecuniary terms, but they are nonetheless observable.

The key, I think, is having a number of universities, with each offering its own unique mix of instruction and research. E.g. NUS could be more research-oriented, while NTU could be more instruction-oriented.