SINGAPORE: ‘Education Hub’ Plans Take a Knock

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Roshan Lal

SINGAPORE, May 26 2007 (IPS) - An ambitious plan by the Singapore government to attract reputable foreign universities to set up off-shore campuses on this island nation took a knock this week when Australia’s University of New South Wales (UNSW) announced the closure of its campus here.

Two years ago when UNSW announced plans to build a multimillion dollar campus here, the tiny island nation’s Economic Development Board (EDB) said it was ‘’proud to be a close partner with UNSW in its pioneering thrust to globalise education,” through its Asia campus here.

But after only three months in operation, UNSW-Asia dropped a bombshell on Wednesday by announcing, at a hastily convened press conference, that the new campus will close down at the end of the first semester on Jun. 28. The 148 enrolled students who have paid tuition fees have been offered scholarships to study at the parent university in Sydney.

“We admit that it’s a setback. For us, we have to keep chasing our vision,” said EDB’s assistant managing director Aw Kah Peng at the press conference. She added that foreign students were still interested in coming to Singapore and pointed out that their numbers have risen from about 50,000 in 2001 to 80,000 last year.

“The lower-than-anticipated enrolments and current demand have highlighted financial and operational issues that make the operation unsustainable,” said UNSW’s vice-chancellor Fred Hilmer who flew in from Sydney to make the announcement.

There are many educational institutions based in Australia, Britain, the United States, India and Japan that offer off-shore degrees and diplomas in Singapore, but these are not full-fledged campuses – only done in partnership with local business institutions that usually rent out space in the densely populated island. Usually lecturers from the parent institutions come here on short assignments of two to four weeks and during the rest of the semester students are looked after by locally recruited tutors..

In contrast UNSW-Asia had fulltime staff based here. However, only 48 foreign students enrolled for the first semester. As recently as in April, UNSW-Asia was canvassing in India to recruit students for their August 2007 intake.

Hilmer indicated that the low level of applications was due to the fact that when foreign students wanted an Australian degree they mean an Australian experience. “When a student says I want an Australian degree, what they really mean is I want the experience of living in Sydney… buying surf boards,” he told the press conference.

Interestingly, UNSW-Asia announced its decision to close down here a day after the parent university announced major cost cutting measures in Sydney, including non-renewal of all casual lecturing contracts for the next semester, reduction in the teaching semester from 14 to 12 weeks and decreasing the number of courses students could major in from 45 to 37.

With such cost-cutting going on in Sydney it is not surprising that only 39 of the 148 students here have taken up the offer to relocate to Australia. UNSW is offering scholarships worth 14,400 US dollars to local students and 7,854 dollars to foreign students to help them relocate to the Australian campus.

Responding to questions on the future of the education hub plans, put to him by Channel News Asia, trade and industry minister Lim Hng Kiang said: “Well, we still have that ambitious target. We are nearly halfway there. We will continue to work hard to try to bring other providers here to build up the whole education landscape.”

Others have suggested that the strategy of attracting reputable foreign universities to set up off-shore campuses here and help build up the Singapore education brand may not be the right way to go. Prestigious institutions that have set up campuses here include the John Hopkins University from the U.S. and INSEAD, the top-notch, French business school.

On the other hand, two of Singapore’s state-funded universities, National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University, figure among the top 20 ‘ivory league’ universities of the Asia-Pacific region.

With about 20 percent of the students (numbering some 60,000) studying in local universities being foreigners who pay fees that is less than half of what UNSW Asia was charging, some commentators say it may be better to expand the local universities’ capacities.

The UNSW-Asia saga also raise the question whether the globalisation of education is a purely business proposition without social responsibilities. In the public statements made by both UNSW and EDB the talk has been mainly on economic viability aspects rather than the social responsibilities of an education provider.

”Providing an education is not only a business but, more importantly, it is also a social responsibility,” argued Kevin Lim, in a letter published in the ‘Today” newspaper.

Meera Sahasranamam, writing in the same newspaper, noted that “the talk of risk-return balance hints that the school was more of a business venture than an additional venue for students to pursue knowledge.”