Universities in Singapore: how many is too many?

When I was in Singapore last month, I was struck by just how many universities now there are in Singapore - it was a far cry from when I was a kid growing up in Singapore. The main local ones today are of course NUS, NTU, SMU and SIM - but two new local universities have just been launched SUTD (Singapore University of Design and Technology) and Yale-NUS College. On top of that, there are the five polytechnics, the three art institutes, eight foreign universities with campuses in Singapore and a large number of private foreign institutes offering degree programmes.

The amount of tertiary education providers would be expected to grow since the population of Singapore has more than doubled since the early 1980s, but whilst the population has doubled, the number of tertiary education providers in Singapore have more than doubled since the 1980s. So this begs the question: just how many universities does Singapore need? Let me address both sides of the argument.

What kinds of universities would best serve the needs of Singapore?

YES - Singapore needs these new universities.

The one big difference between Singapore today and back in the 1980s is the attitude towards tertiary education - back in the 1980s, many Singaporeans were quite happy to join the workforce without a degree. However today, it seems like a degree is a bare minimum and even those who aren't able to earn themselves a place at a respectable university like NUS will get themselves a degree not worth the paper it is printed on from some chapalang degree mill in America. It boils down to the question: is the trade off worth it? Would the time and money spent getting the degree bring you a greater reward in the long run?

Now it can be argued that many people who chose not to go to university back in the 1970s and 1980s could have benefited from a degree if they had the opportunity to do it. Whether or not your degree will be relevant to your career choice is another matter of course, but one is almost certainly better off armed with a good degree than without. It is simplistic to divide degrees up into good degrees (eg. from NUS, NTU, Oxbridge, Ivy League) vs bad degrees (ie. chapalang degree mills) - there is the grey area in between of course that we often neglect. We're talking about mediocre universities which are not elite, not even top 40 in UK or US (or top 10 in Australia), but still offer an acceptable level of academic rigour in their programme to make their degree useful for the student.

There is a gap in the market in Singapore: the middle ground.

The explosion of new universities in Singapore represents this growth of the (lower) middle ground, for mediocre students who otherwise would not have earned themselves in a place at NUS/NTU. Back in the 1980s, such students may have opted to go abroad to Australia, the UK or US if their parents could afford it, otherwise, they would simply give up on the idea of getting a degree. Now, they have the option of getting a decent (well, mediocre) degree without the high costs of spending three years overseas.

This is indeed good news for the parents of Singapore - I remember back in the late 1980s when this family friend screwed up his A levels and couldn't get into NUS/NTU. So his parents sent him to a university in the UK that was on the wrong end of the league table and in hindsight, that was a lot of money spent on a very below average degree from a crap university - it was a pretty poor investment. He kinda got away with it because employers back then were more ignorant about the university ranking system in the UK. His parents had no choice back then as the local options were far more limited then - so it was either sending him abroad or him entering the work force without a degree.

Studying in the UK or US may be fun, but is usually rather expensive.

Education in itself is a big industry - a university can generate a lot of jobs! The construction of a university campus would provide so many jobs for the construction industry. Everyone from architects to electricians to plumbers to garden designers to interior designers to IT technicians will benefit from the construction of a new campus. There is a huge cohort of teaching staff along with support stuff (lab technicians, librarians, IT support, facilities management etc) along with other ancillary services (canteen and catering staff, cleaning crew, security staff, the bookshop etc).

The UK has a huge education industry - there are currently around half a million foreign students in the UK at the moment, most of them in tertiary education. These students spend a lot of money not just in school fees, but also in all other aspects of everyday life. Students use public transport, buy food at the local supermarket, shop for clothes in the malls, use sports facilities, use mobile phones, go to the cinema and of course, they need a place to live. In the UK, almost all university students need some kind of accommodation - student accommodation is big business in the UK.

Foreign students inject a lot of money into the UK economy because they spend a lot!

Here's the thing that shocks and surprises me: I can understand a student coming to the UK for Oxford, Cambridge or any of the top 10 universities , but why would a foreign student pay this much for a university at the wrong end of the league table? But guess what? Universities at the very bottom of the league table like London Metropolitan University are particularly popular with foreign students - I don't get it. Why pay this much for such a worthless degree from such a crap university? But regardless of the quality of the degree the students receive, a functioning university still generates plenty of jobs. If Singapore can grow their education sector, then Singapore can position itself as an Asian education hub, as a viable alternative to the UK, US or Australia. Given the amount of jobs more universities can generate, this can't be a bad thing. One would be mad not to embrace it.

At this stage I am struggling a little to find something to counter the argument, when there seem to be so many benefits associated with universities, but I have found some arguments to slow this expansion of universities in Singapore.

NO - there are too many, we don't need any more for now.

There is the issue of quality vs quantity: you would rather have one university like Cambridge than 100 universities like London Metropolitan University (one of the worst in the UK, usually at the very bottom of the league tables or nearly there). Let's think about the students in Singapore - what do they need? What will best prepare them for the best jobs in the working world? What is the gap in the market now?

Right now, there are few really good local options: you can't go wrong with NUS and NTU. SMU not quite there yet but not a bad compromise if you can't get into SMU. SUTD and Yale-NUS are brand new and a bit of an untested entity at this stage, so I wouldn't want to risk telling anyone to enroll there yet. As for the Australian universities in town, James Cook is not even in the top half of the Australian league table (18 out of 29) and Curtin is slightly better (coming in 13 out of 29) but both universities are vastly inferior to NUS and NTU. According to Temple University's wikipedia page, they are ranked 121st in the US - so even by their own admission, they are not exactly attracting the brightest brains in America. Of the two British universities, Cardiff Met is ranked 96th out of 124 and Queen Margaret is ranked 90th out of 124. Oh dear. Not quite Oxford and Cambridge, no? Tut tut...

Do you want a degree from a crap university?

That's just the universities - I could go on to the private institutes but it's just a very depressing picture there. Most of these private institutes are partnering with universities very low on the league tables in their own countries. Take ERC Singapore for example, their British partners are the University of Greenwich (ranked 95th) and the University of Wolverhampton who have been ranked between 90 and 100 for the last few years and have stopped participating in these ranking surveys because of their dismal results but their 2008 ranking of 93rd should give you an indication of their position in the league table should they take part in the ranking survey. Oh dear. Aiyoh. 

So whilst there is indeed a big expansion of choices for the students in Singapore, really, with the sole exception of SMU which is the only credible second choice to NUS/NTU (it's not as great but it'll have to do if you can't get into NUS/NTU), the rest of the alternatives are really catering for the bottom end of the market. So if you're a student who has messed up his A levels, then the good news is that you have plenty of options in Singapore with your bad grades. But if you're a student who has straight As, then really nothing has changed since the 1980s - it's still NUS/NTU or go to a better university abroad like Oxford or Cambridge. Is it just me, or has this expansion in choices been at the wrong end of the market? So whilst this expansion may have generation jobs for some people (which is a good thing), how many parents want to actually see their children end up in one of these institutes catering for the lower end of the market instead of NUS? Would you want such a degree, hmmmm?

Not all graduates are equal...

So if Singapore does have the aspiration to become a regional university hub, would it rather have a small number of excellent institutions or a large number of private institutions working with the most chapalang foreign universities from around the world? The term GIGO comes to mind, garbage in = garbage out. Great universities will produce excellent scientists, politicians, business leaders, entrepreneurs, academics, engineers, architects, doctors and artists who will have a great impact on the society around them. What can you expect however, from the bottom feeders, the universities who mop up the remnants of those who do not have the grades to get into a decent university?

To be realistic about it, building a great university takes a lot of time - NUS was established way back in 1905 and that's one thing it shares with all the universities ranked within the top 50 in the world. Even somewhere like CalTech which may sound relatively new (since Los Angeles barely had a population of 100,000 in 1900) was in fact founded in 1891. It's going to take an awfully long time before SMU can achieve the reputations of NUS and NTU. In the meantime, should we be encouraging this expansion at the lower end of the market - or should more resources focused on the higher end of the market? For example, instead of setting up a brand new university in SUTD, wouldn't the resources have been better spent to help NUS and NTU expand so that they can increase their research capacity, take on more students and build on what they have already achieved over the years?

Could the money be better spent elsewhere?

For a brand new university like SUTD off the ground to a great start, they need to find their niche rather than compete against NUS/NTU - for example, they ought to be providing very specialist courses (game development anyone?) in areas not covered by more general computer science or engineering degrees offered at NUS/NTU. If they can build up a reputation for being able to successfully predict what kind of skills will be in demand in three years time, then they can find themselves becoming very popular very quickly. Of course, all universities think they can predict this successfully, but it really depends on the university having good links with industry experts in the working world. I fear too many universities are so isolated by the working world, run by academics who may have never ever set foot in a real office in the business world before - how are they supposed to understand what is going on in the business world then?

I remember an exchange I had with a reader of mine who asked me if it was worth his while pursuing the business analytics course at NUS. I read the prospectus and shook my head every step of the way: it was trying too hard to cover too many subjects whilst not dedicating enough time to any of them. The term 'jack of all trades and master of none' comes to mind: there must be a good compromise between breadth and depth when it comes to structuring a course like that and in this case, they did get it wrong - and this is NUS. It makes me think that this course is structured by a bunch of academics who have totally lost touch with the business world, spending far more time in Kent Ridge than Raffles Place. So if NUS can mess up like that, it does show you just how big a challenge SUTD has before them.

Your degree ought to prepare you for your future job.

We would all love to see SUTD and Yale-NUS provide that credible alternative to NUS and NTU and move into that space which SMU is currently occupying: ie. a good, viable, reasonable second choice. It remains to be seen if they will indeed occupy that gap in the market or if they will be consigned into the rubbish heap at the bottom of the market. This will not be clear until we have at least the first few batches of graduates from SUTD and Yale-NUS and as they say, the proof is in the pudding. We shall see in due course, on va voir - I shall reserve my judgement for now.

So there you go, that's both sides of the argument for you. If you're a student at the moment contemplating your choices in Singapore, let me know what you think. Would you consider going to somewhere like SUTD for your degree? What do you think of this expansion? Let me know what you think, leave a comment below, thanks!