Thursday, August 23, 2007

Singapore’s fourth university

A fourth university is in the pipeline. The creation of another university is to create more graduates and hence more knowledge workers for the knowledge era and to feed the demands of the globalising economy.

Personally, I hope the government will adopt a considered and holistic evaluation before deciding to embark on the creation of another university.

True, there will be many graduates with the creation of another university, but Singapore is always subject to the vagaries of the global economy. Problems abound should there be an influx of graduates into the market who could not find suitable jobs in the future.

What distinct features should the new university have? Should it be a full-fledged university or a specialised university? Instead of building another university, Singapore should attract more foreign prominent universities into Singapore to offer an alternative mix of international curriculum for the students.


The sudden closure of New South Wales university and similar sudden hiatus in plans for foreign universities to start a new campus in Singapore may be telling of some problems the universities foresee in the future. These problems may be similar to potential problems for the new university and the government shall find out more about them. I really hope the creation of another university by government is not to make up for the reluctance of foreign universities to base in Singapore

As of now, I believe there are already ‘a handful’ of graduates in the market who are already accepting low paying jobs as nowadays graduates are practically everywhere. Unless a graduate is outstanding, the chances of obtaining a good job is also slim.

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