17 November 2016
Singapore’s three largest publicly-funded universities have stated that despite being subject to the rising influence of global rankings, they remain committed to building an educational system that best suits Singapore and to do what is best for the country.
The National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University have seen improved placings in various world and regional university rankings such as the Times Higher Education Asia University Rankings. Acting Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung has previously raised the concern that institutions are tweaking their teaching and research models to fulfill criteria drawn up by foreign publications.
Mr Ong has urged universities not to chase rankings “blindly” as this could lead to the country having top-ranked universities which belong to the world but not to Singapore.
Singapore’s public universities are cognizant of this fact are and striving to build both a diverse curriculum as well as embark on education projects tailored to the local and regional context.
For example, in recent years, local universities have paid more attention to local and regional social science research. The NUS’ Centre for Family and Population Research was launched in April last year. SMU, on the other hand, has identified five areas of research that are relevant to Singapore – finance, analytics, innovation and entrepreneurship, ageing and healthcare management as well as urban management and sustainability. NTU has set up the Ageing Research Institute for Society and Education to help find solutions to Singapore’s issues with an ageing population.
Mr Ong Ye Kung has said that universities must demonstrate how they are fulfilling all their core missions, which is to impart skills, to create and transmit knowledge, and to shape and define society. The university scene must therefore be truly diverse – where institutions focus on much more than just academic research. There is indeed scope for some universities to put strong emphasis on excellent teaching and developing skills mastery in students, for others to take pride in forging close collaboration with industries, and yet for others to position themselves uniquely to work with the Government and contribute to public policy-making or major public projects.