Just how good are NUS and NTU anyway?

Hi there, I stumbled upon a question asked on Reddit whilst looking at the huge spike of traffic to my blog of late - the problem with asking a question on Reddit is that you are likely to be ignored or you may get random answers from people who are not qualified at all to address the issues meaningfully. I did however think that this is a reasonably good question and so I shall address it in this blog post. So here is the original question from Reddit: Honestly, how good are NUS and NTU? Like I know they're what most people aim to get into but are they really that good?

Now allow me to make this clear: I didn't go to university in Singapore but I am writing from the point of view of a gatekeeper who has dealt with graduates from universities from many different countries, so that will be the angle I am addressing the issue. This does mean that I am addressing the issue from the angle that really matters at the end of the day: how you are viewed in the job market. The simple answer is that NUS and NTU are excellent universities and the short answer is that they are really that good. But allow me to explain why: Singapore is a country with a current population of 5.6 million (and rising), that's a sizable population equivalent to that of Denmark or Finland. The size of the local population is important as it represents the pool of local talent trying to get into the best local universities. If you have a big enough pool of students competing to get into the most popular courses in NUS/NTU, then eventually you will arrive at a stage where the demand outstrips supply. Take the example of medicine at NUS for example: there are about 500 places available per year to study medicine at NUS - that means you have to be amongst the top 500 applicants to even have a chance of studying medicine there. That does mean that unless you get straight As, you're unlikely to get even close to the top 500 applicants. This explains their consistently good rankings in the international league tables.

That is the same situation with all of the most popular courses in NUS/NTU such as law, dentistry and engineering. You could probably get by with less than perfect grades if you're applying for one of the less popular courses but we're still talking about a mix of As and Bs rather than Cs and Ds. With a reasonably big local market and a scarcity of places at these two universities, the places are thus granted to the applicants with good grades. This has resulted in a situation whereby mediocre, average students with Cs and Ds are often turned away by NUS/NTU and have to turn to either private universities or other universities abroad. So if you've narrowly missed out on a place at NUS by a sliver, say you wanna do law at NUS but you have just one B amongst your As then you'd better hope you have rich parents who can afford to send you abroad. So by that token, that does take care of an important aspect of ensuring that the university has a good reputation - that it does continually attract students of very high calibre and by the same token, it does turn away students who do not meet their high standards. This is because of the popularity of NUS/NTU creating a situation whereby the scarcity of places in their most popular courses have meant that only the very best granted a place there.

Want to study at NUS? Then you'd better have great results.

Another important factor is the fact that the Singapore government does invest very heavily in education - that is a reflection of the Asian culture where education is very important. You can't expect a university to perform miracles and 'fix' a student who has suffered from having had a terrible education up till the A levels; rather, a university like NUS merely takes the best students with brilliant results who have already proven themselves to be very capable. So if you were to look at the bigger picture, the investment in education both at tertiary and pre-university levels is very adequate in Singapore. Furthermore, this is topped up in the private sector when kiasu parents seek additional help with tuition teachers who step in whenever the schools may be inadequate - this means that you are not going to have any shortage of highly motivated, academically brilliant students to take up those places in the most popular courses in NUS/NTU. Please, I am not defending the situation whereby Singaporean children are subjected to a lot of pressure and expected to perform very well at school hook or by crook, but it does help sustain the consistently high standards of NUS/NTU.

If you were to compare the market conditions faced by NUS/NTU to the UK for example, then it is actually radically different. Amongst the universities in the top ten, five of them are within 90 km of each other - the other five are a bit more scattered but still not that far away. The best university in Malaysia is Universiti Malaya in Kuala Lumpur - but most Singaporeans would never ever consider that to be an option even though the main language of instruction is English (not Malay!) and the university is very popular amongst local Malaysian students. Other universities in the region such as those in Thailand, Vietnam or Indonesia are just not even an option because of the language barrier. However, plenty of students from Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and other regional countries do want to study in NUS/NTU as they are the best universities in the region that offer a degree in English, so that does play in NUS/NTU's favour in being able to access a wider pool of talents, ensuring that the places available are always filled by those of the higher calibre. Going further afield, the university of Hong Kong is also very respectable, but somehow, Singaporeans simply do not even consider it as an option, preferring to look towards options in countries like the USA, UK, Canada, NZ and Australia.

Why are American and British universities more popular than those in KL or HK?

Now I suppose you want me to talk about the quality of the education at NUS/NTU - ie. the science of pedagogy. Well, quite frankly, that's far less relevant to me as a gatekeeper because I'm being very realistic here. I'm sure the quality of the courses at NUS/NTU are excellent, mostly because the government of Singapore has the money to invest in NUS/NTU. Nonetheless, a lot of what you do at university is going to be completely irrelevant to what you will end up doing in your future jobs based on the fact that your lecturers at university do not have the power to predict what kinds of jobs you will have in the future. Even if you take a course like engineering, well an engineer will tell you that every job is different and presents a unique set of challenges: Your degree will only give you the basics to even begin to deal with the task at hand - need I state the obvious? No job will ever involve you studying for an exam like you do in university, when you start working for any company, you will be given a lot of new training to give you the skills and knowledge that are specific to the company's products and current projects - having a degree only really shows that you're the kind of person who is able to learn quickly and pick up the necessary information to deal with the task at hand. So by that token, the quality of the teaching is far less important to the employer - after all, you simply can't make shit shine, even the best university cannot turn a total idiot into a genius even with the very best teaching methods and technology in the world.

So far, all I have done is sung loads of praises of NUS/NTU - but what are some of the drawbacks of studying at these two Singaporean universities then? Well, there aren't that many to be honest and I am forcing myself to split hairs to be critical - some of these criticism won't apply to all of the students who are at NUS/NTU but for what it is worth, allow me to name some drawbacks that do come into mind. Firstly, going to university should be more than just an extension of your A levels - it should be an important step whereby you are learning to function as an adult in society rather than just a teenager living at home with your parents. Well, a lot of Singaporean females do exactly that: over-protective parents may even think that the hostels are not exactly safe for their daughters whilst others may worry about their children spending too much time on tasks like doing the laundry or cooking when they really should be studying, "Aiyoh, how is Ah Girl going to cope without a maid? She doesn't even know how to make instant noodles or operate a washing machine, how is she going to go live independently in a hostel?" Some of these concerns are valid of course: the quality of your sleep in a hostel for example could be worrying if you're unlikely enough to have rowdy, inconsiderate neighbours. Some parents would prefer if their children simply continued living at home whilst attending NUS/NTU to help them achieve the best possible grades - this is a noble gesture of course, but it doesn't help them grow up at all.

Do you want your child to study hard or grow up at university?

Another drawback of going to NUS/NTU is that it may be too culturally familiar to many of the local students: some may see this as a benefit, after all, the students are stressed enough with the heavy workload and the pressure to achieve good grades, do they really need a culture shock or language barrier on top of all that? Going to study abroad is a great chance for young people to develop their social skills and learn about different cultures, maybe even pick up a new language or become more fluent in a language they have already been studying. However, given that so much of what we learn is neither relevant nor useful to the jobs we will do in the future, developing our social skills is probably one of the most important and useful aspects of going to university. Going to study abroad will give you an opportunity to learn how to interact and do business with people from another countries and cultures whilst Singaporean students who have grown up in Singapore are already very familiar with the local culture. Sure you may be able to take a two week holiday to Italy or you might befriend a foreign student or two whilst at NUS, but that is not going to be quite the same experience as say going to study at a French university where you're going to be one of the very few foreigners in the class (that's exactly what I did at the Sorbonne). It was the double-whammy of the culture shock and language barrier but I learn so much from the experience. The more you are challenged, the more you are taken out of your comfort zone, the more you will learn. This is not to say that locally educated students can't pick up those skills later on in life - but you're still at a disadvantage compared to those who have already done so and you could be competing with them to get your first job.

Whilst you will undoubtedly get a respectable degree at NUS/NTU, another problem that I would like to flag up is the boredom factor. I have no doubt that the degree course at NUS/NTU would give your brain a real work out and the course itself would be challenging, but studying locally means spending three more years in an environment you are extremely familiar with already. Yes I know what you're going to say: university should be about getting a good education, it is not a vacation, it is not about having fun, studying for exams is never going to be that fun anyway. Yes, but what if there were other factors that could make it a more enjoyable experience? I remember during my first year at UCL some 20 years ago, there was one winter morning when it snowed quite heavily and I found it quite hard to concentrate on the lecture as I could help staring out of the window at the thick, fluffy flakes of snow floating down from the skies. When I recounted that experience to my sister, she sighed at said, "that sounds so totally amazing, the best we ever got was to stare out of the window at NUS and see the rain come down." Even little things like the winter weather made the whole experience far more refreshing and interesting for me, as the guy from Ang Mo Kio, because you can only spend so many hours a day studying - being able to go to the local park and build a snowman or have snowball fights with your friends just brings out my inner child and that's just not the kind of experience you can have in Singapore. I'm sure if you have enough money, you can find plenty of fun things to do in Singapore, but what you won't have is the time to do those things as a undergrad in a demanding course. That's why even the most busy student can smile when he looks out of the window and sees the first snowfall of the year - that's when even the most ordinary things can put a smile on your face.

Studying abroad means encountering new experiences all the time.

One other problem you would face with an NUS/NTU degree is that it is not that well recognized outside South East Asia - sure it is highly respected in the region, but the moment you try to apply for a job in London or New York, you are unlikely to get the kind of recognition you would get say in Singapore or Kuala Lumpur with your NUS/NTU degree. I'm not saying that a white gatekeeper is going to take one look at your NUS/NTU degree and think it is rubbish but it will be perceived to be inferior compared to the top universities in the West. Whilst the very best scholars from Singapore get scholarships to study in places like Harvard or Oxford rather than NUS, you simply don't get say British or American scholars being sent to NUS. Sorry, but it just doesn't happen. Even if you did go to NUS/NTU with straight As, you still won't be considered as worthy as say a student who earned himself a place in Harvard or Oxford - even local gatekeepers will think, well if you're really that brilliant why didn't you apply for a scholarship to go to Oxford then? So whilst your average Singaporean employer will be very familiar with the best British or American universities, your average British or American employer probably doesn't know anything about NUS/NTU. Of course, for many Singaporeans who have no intention of working abroad, this isn't a factor at all. And even if you do want to work abroad, you're unlikely to be granted a work permit fresh out of university with no work experience at all, so by the time you are finally in a position to apply for a job abroad, your work experience is going to matter so much more than your degree.

And finally, the last problem with NUS;/NTU is not so much specific to the universities, but to Singapore in general - it is not a liberal environment, far from it! Despite her modern appearance, Singapore remains a deeply conservative society. There is very little freedom of speech in Singapore and censorship cuts into every aspect of life in Singapore, including academia. If you're doing research on some chemical engineering project, then that would not have any impact at all, but if you're doing something say to do with law, politics or sociology, then that's going to have an adverse impact on how you operate. Likewise, if you are a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender student, then you are going to be very jealous of your counterparts in universities in the West where they have LGBT societies. Anyone from students to staff can be totally open about their sexuality and nobody would bat an eyelid - you wouldn't need to worry about homophobia in these more liberal universities. But in NUS/NTU, well, anyone who is LGBT community usually stays in the closet, only coming out to very close friends out of fear that it may get them into trouble. Even if they are not surrounded by anyone who is vehemently homophobic, the general advice would be, "keep it a secret, your education comes first.You don't want anything to jeopardize your degree, you might encounter a tutor who hates gays such as Thio Li-Ann. Just keep your head down - after all, university is only for a few short years." So if you're straight and want to study engineering, this isn't a problem at all for you. But if you're gay and want to study law, you're much better off studying in the UK or US.

Overall, NUS and NTU are both excellent universities and please - I don't want you to think that I am being too critical of them but this article wouldn't be balanced if I didn't start splitting hairs and finding fault with NUS and NTU after having sung their praises. Both my sisters fit the profile of the typical NUS student: they both did well in their A levels (though not well enough to become a scholar), thus they both went to NUS and thrived there. Neither of them really ever had any intention of working abroad and both are still working in Singapore today for Singaporean companies, dealing almost exclusively with local Singaporeans so neither of them are disadvantaged in anyway by their NUS degrees. What do you think about how good NUS and NTU are? Would you gladly study there or do you prefer to study abroad? Or are you a former student from NUS/NTU and have thoughts to share about your experience there? Do you command respect with your NUS/NTU degree in Singapore as well as abroad? Leave a comment below please and many thanks for reading.