Singapore Education.
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| The writer (left) with Prof. B V R Chowdary |
“We bring the world to The National University of Singapore and take the students of NUS to the world”. This is the one-liner Prof. B. V. R. Chowdari, executive director, NUS-India research initiatives, used in his presentation on NUS in the office of the Deputy President (research & technology). He invited us to give an overview of the National University of Singapore. In fact, Singapore currently has three autonomous universities: the National University; Nanyang Technological University; and Singapore Management University. We could visit only NUS during our brief stay. NUS has been producing the future generation of leaders and hi-achievers equipped with multi-disciplinary knowledge, skills and qualities.
The Mission Statement of the Ministry of Education in Singapore says that the wealth of a nation lies in its people, their commitment to country and community, their willingness to strive, and their ability to think, achieve and excel. For a small country, with no natural resources except its people, education is a vital lifeline. It is seen as fundamental to nation-building. Hence the goals are also clear enough to transform Singapore from a trading port of migrants into a nation and ensure that Singaporeans had the requisite skills and knowledge to compete successfully.
I could sense the rich learning environment and its transformative education when I took a walk along the corridors of Singapore’s oldest university, and experienced the atmosphere which nurtured some of the nation’s best and brightest brains for over 100 years.
Though they became independent in 1965, they understood the need to transform the colonial legacy into something that could put them at the top in everything they chose to excel in. This is the area in which we singularly lag behind. They have been performing well and contributing to the economic development of Singapore. NUS is leading other educational institutions by catering to a diverse student population of over 32,000 from some 100 countries; it has 14 faculties, schools and seven overseas campuses, 22 research institutes and four research centers of excellence. Professor Chowdari told us that though they would receive
70% of the budget from the government, they would run it like a non-profit organization with the outlook of a company. I am really thrilled to listen to such words, for I see in India heavy intervention from the government in every matter related to universities, mostly resulting in negative impact.
NUS has many global initiatives. Its student exchange program, double degree and joint degree programs help students study at 180 partner universities all over the world. They have inter-disciplinary research initiatives. Have we heard of medical humanities, quantitative reasoning and evolutionary psychology in Indian universities? Students there are given travel grants, and they stay for six months at partner universities and come back with a global outlook. In NUS 20% of intake is from other countries. It believes that students of Singapore will benefit from interaction with students elsewhere. They want to transform their students into confident global citizens.
To flourish like NUS, support from the government is necessary. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong once said: “So, we are aiming for a mountain range, not a pinnacle. We want many routes up, many ways to succeed… Then we will have Singapore the way we want it to be, with everybody with a place in
it… In every profession, there are people who are excellent, who are outstanding, who are world-class, and I think we must be like that in Singapore.”
Research and development spending in India is a little over 1% whereas Singapore earmarks 3% of its GDP to R&D. There is no guarantee that spending some amount on R&D would translate into improving research outcomes. For progress to be made not only the amount spent on R&D but also the quality of expenditure
needs to improve. Singapore has done miracles in the regard.
In comparison, India fails miserably. The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Science and Engineering Indicators, 2002, show that, in the US, about 4% of science and engineering graduates finish their doctorates; this is about 7% for Europe and in India this is not even 0.4%.
In the academic rank of world universities,
NSU has been moving upwards, and many studies show it at 27th place in the world. Unfortunately, in the Shanghai Jiao Tong University academic ranking of world universities, only three universities, the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore), IIT Kharagpur and the University of Calcutta, figured in the world’s top 500 for 2004. However, in 2006, only two universities from India remained in the list.
Professor Chowdari was a first batch student of IIT Chennai. When we asked him how he would rate Indian students, he said they were, unlike Chinese students, all-rounders. Their capacity to think for out-of-box solutions was rated commendably. The tragedy is that institutes in India lose respect in spite of the fact that it has bright children that can make a difference; again, unfortunately for us and fortunately for somebody else,
they are making a difference in the rest of the world. We can understand the significance of this development when we know that around 1000 IIT and IIM graduates are now working in Singapore alone. Notwithstanding the fact that Singapore was beset by its own vulnerabilities –too small to be viable on its own; a Chinese majority State that sat uncomfortably in the middle of the Malay archipelago; pursuing a creed based on meritocracy, which was at odds with the race-based politics of its neighbor, it could survive,
succeed and surpass all expectations by investing in education. On one side, its people are trying to reclaim the land from the ocean and, on the other side, they could allocate 150 acres of its prime land to NUS. This shows their commitment to the cause of education.
As Howard Gardner, the legendary professor of cognitive psychology at the Harvard Graduate School of education says: “If you do not work steadily and improve, you have to work under someone who is steadily improving.” Singaporeans have understood this better than anybody else in the world. They know how to honour their achievers and how to retain them and how to regain them. Their vibrant economy has its roots in the network of education, industry and market. Now the question is when we3 Indians will realize who “we” is I wish someone heard this wakeup call.
