Summarized from ST
04 April 2015
All six local universities have raised their tuition fees for the new academic year, largely to pay for rising operating costs, including that of creating online learning systems, they said. The fee hikes for local undergraduates this year range from 0.6 per cent to 8 per cent — similar to previous years. But for most undergraduate courses, the increase is about 1 to 1.5 per cent for the new intake, the Ministry of Education said.
At the National University of Singapore (NUS), fees for most courses will rise by about 1.5 per cent for local undergraduates, but will jump by about 5 to 8 per cent for a handful of courses – dentistry, medicine, law and music. For instance, fresh law students can expect to pay about $12,400 a year — 6.4 per cent, or $750, more than the previous fee of $11,650, while new music undergraduates will pay $11,950 a year — 8 per cent, or $900, more than the previous fee of $11,050.
Professor Tan Eng Chye, its deputy president of academic affairs and provost, said the cost varies across different degree programmes, depending on the faculty, equipment and operating costs, among other things.
The fee hike at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is about 1.3 per cent for Singaporeans in most courses. Its biggest rise of 3.8 per cent, or $1,200 a year, is for medicine.
Professor Kam Chan Hin, its senior associate provost of undergraduate education, said the revised fee will partially defray inflationary costs and costs of improving students’ learning experience. This includes implementing “flipped classrooms” where students learn content online outside of the classroom and then discuss questions in class.
All six institutions said that financial help — scholarships, bursaries and loans — is available.
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