I am glad to hear that Dr. Tony Tan has mapped out his "Action Plan to make NUS, NTU World- Class", January 25, 1997, The Straits Times.
However, I wonder whether simply doubling the postgraduate intake by the year 2000 would really help achieve this. What has to be considered is the admission standards and eligibility requirements of these post graduate programs and the identifying and focus of meaningful and achievable/sustainable research areas rather than blindly chase after the "hot button" media- grabbing areas of postgraduate study.
As to the Admissions requirements, I hope that our local universities will not be the last resort for post-grad rejects from other more prestigious Universities like Harvard or MIT. It is conceivable that in the aim of fulfilling admission quotas to meet a Ministerial numerical target, standards could be sacrificed. I'm sure that this will not be the case for NUS. Also it must be noted that it is a sad reality that the best and brightest will not only go to a University that offers the best facilities and environment for research but the overall academic environment and national quality of life has to be considered as well. If a university is perceived, whether unjustly or otherwise, as not encouraging academic freedom but fiefdom, the university should vigorously defend and disprove such spurious allegations.
Identifying and focusing "hot button"but meaningful and achievable/sustainable research areas of postgraduate research is more delicate and difficult matter. I just hope that our local universities should not ape or struggle behind other universities who have already taken strides in these "hot growth" and media friendly areas like treatment of AIDS, economical harnessing of fusion energy sources and the cure of the common cold. Even research into humble subjects like algae or scum can reap commercial benefits in environment technology. So I hope that our Universities' administrators or researchers will not be seduced by merely wanting to appear on the covers of TIME magazine but be aware of and acknowledge our shortcomings.
It is interesting to note that the New York Times on January 24, 1997 had stated that although Singapore was increasing research and development, much of it is "still done by multinationals". This means that the fruits of such R & D will be funneled back to Corporate HQ and transplanted the MNC's plant somewhere else in the world and Singapore, as an economy still loses out in the end. This is precisely why I had applauded NUS's decision to embark on basic research in National University of Singapore's R & D is on the Right Track, ST August 29, 1996. Reviewing the NUS and NTU curriculum is another top-down solution to a bottom-up problem. Creativity and thinking skills do not miraculously appear when Singapore students enter into University. This fostering of creativity and thinking skills must be from basic education. So far our basic education system is like a meat grinder run by the cogs of rote learning, examinations, test assignments and assessments. When you want to have a gourmet sausage of a creative thinker, the raw material has got to be good and treated properly from a younger age. A badly farmed ham will make a bad sausage no matter how fancy the final meat grinder is. Hence, throwing money into fostering creativity and thinking skills at the tertiary level is not wise and blinkered. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the approach to fostering creative skills and thinking at the primary and secondary school level.
But I must give Dr. Tan credit for wanting to revamp the engineering curriculum because when I was in the NUS Faculty of Law, I enrolled and attended classes for a non-Examinable Option course conducted by the Faculty of Architecture, called Introduction to Art. There wasn't a single Engineering student in my class and the main reason was that the attendance of such courses did not add to their final grades.
Nevertheless, I'm not too sure whether revamping the Engineering courses would work in view of the old adage that you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. In the course of my work as an intellectual property attorney, I regularly meet American or European inventor/entrepreneurs who are commercializing their inventions. They are quite colorful personalities and it was more their life experiences rather than whether they studied non- Engineering courses that made their research and development efforts bring financial success.
As to the issue of providing more tertiary education opportunities, I hope that Dr. Tony Tan also has plans to enhance and expand the Singapore Open University's programs and curriculum in addition to the private tertiary institutions that were mentioned.
But perhaps the best way to make NUS and NTU into world class universities is to instill an environment of domestic competition between them. Having them compete in tandem against foreign competitors is far too abstract and does not have enough red-meat appeal for the students, lecturers and University administrators. Perhaps, the best way to proceed is to lift the heavy hand of Government control in the University's affairs and allow the invisible hand of competition to sort out the men from the sheep. The also-rans and the world class.