07 September 2021
The National University of Singapore’s College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) brings together the best of the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the NUS Faculty of Science.
It aims to prepare Singapore students to tackle grave challenges facing the world, such as like climate change, cyber security. These issues pay little heed to disciplinary boundaries.
Separately, the Faculty of Engineering and the School of Design and Environment will also be merged. These mergers help usher in the age of interdisciplinary education, at least, in Singapore’s universities.
As Singapore accelerates its interdisciplinary drive in higher education, some challenges need to be addressed. One concern would be whether depth of knowledge will be compromised. Assuming fixed teaching hours, it is inevitable that some depth will have to be traded off for greater breadth. Furthermore, with information now becoming outdated faster, the excessive specialisation seen in the past could even be counterproductive.