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Just today,
news broke that former DPM Tony Tan has not ruled out a
presidential run to succeed President SR Nathan. Although he did
not say he might be running for President, he has refused to rule
it out either. What should Singaporeans make of his possible
candidacy? To answer this question it might be helpful to shed some
light on his record on one specific aspect.
For over two decades, Dr Tony Tan
oversaw university education as its Minister-in-charge.
In the late 1990s, the Singapore government convened a panel, under
the direction of DPM Dr Tony Tan to re-examine university admission
criteria. One of the pressing problems seen by the government at
the time was that Singapore’s low birth rate, in part caused by
misguided eugenics population policies, had resulted in fewer
and fewer graduates entering universities. As reported in the
Straits Times on 1st August 1997:
* MORE GRADUATES NEEDED: Singapore
will not have enough graduates to service the economy in the year
2000, and steps will have to be taken to boost
the intake at the universities here, while attracting
more graduates from abroad as well, said Deputy Prime Minister Tony
Tan, who oversees university education.
The panel was set up in 1998 and
held its first meeting on 17th April 1998. Although Dr Tony Tan was
not on the panel, he was the minister overall in charge of it.
Apart from the projected shortage of skilled graduates, one of the
other reasons for reviewing university admission criteria was to
address the perception that it was almost entirely academic based
with no consideration for extra-curricular achievements. The other,
seemingly innocuous goal, was to transform the local universities
of NUS and NTU into world-class universities.
Right from the start in 1998, Dr
Tony Tan
ruled that a policy which limits foreigners or protects
Singaporean students and graduates was not on the
table:
One student had asked if the Government would implement policies
that would protect Singaporeans facing competition from foreigners,
for jobs as well as university places.
Dr Tan answered: “There is no way in which you are going
to be able to protect either Singaporeans or Singapore because we
are a small country.
“We don’t set prices. We are a price-taker, not a price-setter,”
he said on Thursday.
In a similar vein with Minister
George Yeo, who rebutted MP Tan Cheng Bock
later in 1999 on grounds that Singapore should not adopt
Singaporeans first policy when it came to jobs, DPM Tony Tan was
adamant that Singaporeans should not get
preferential treatment whether competing for jobs or places in
local universities.
Fast-forward a year later, when it
was becoming apparent that Singapore still needed more graduates to
service its economy lest economic growth slows,
a report appeared in the Straits Times questioning if the
government should increase the intake of university students at
local universities NTU and NUS due to an increasing number of
Singaporean students who were unable to qualify for local
university, and had to resort to expensive educational
opportunities overseas, the vast majority of them being polytechnic
graduates who had been shut out of local universities without being
told a good reason why (given the non-transparent nature of
university admission critierion):
To make matters worse, it was
becoming apparent that Singapore was losing talent because of this
overseas brain drain. Taking the case of
Tan Teck Chuan:
After completing his national
service, he joined Ngee Ann Polytechnic where he began his winning
streak, sweeping more than 10 book prizes, a scholarship and the
first Tay Eng Soon gold medal for outstanding work as a diploma
student in building services.
Then came decision time. He could
wait for another eight months and try for a place at the National
University of Singapore or the Nanyang Technological
University.
If he clinched a place, it would
mean studying for another four years as he would not be allowed to
skip the first year because his polytechnic course was not
considered relevant.
His other option: Go to Cardiff
University and aim for an honours degree in two years.
NUS and NTU do not reveal how they
calculate the entry points for polytechnic graduates, but Mr Tan
knew that besides his polytechnic grades, his O-level results and
work experience would be taken into account. On that basis,
he did not rate his chances highly.
On the other hand, he had a firm
offer from Cardiff, one of the top five universities in mechanical
engineering in Britain.
The choice was clear, but the
two-year stint in Wales did not come cheap though – $60,000 to be
exact.
At the end of it all, Teck Chuan
said that he wished he had a chance at local universities:
Although he appreciated the value
of the overseas exposure, Mr Tan told Insight he wished that
Singapore had given him and others like him the opportunity to
pursue tertiary education here – at less cost to himself and his
family.
“People ask me why was I not
satisfied with a poly diploma. But let’s face it, in Singapore,
what counts is a degree.
“And by the end of my poly course,
I knew I had the ability to do a degree in two or three
years, so I don’t see why I don’t deserve that shot at a university
degree – right here at home.”
To be clear, Teck Chuan was not
just one out of a few Singaporeans who missed out opportunities at
local universities. The articles goes on to say that UK
universities usually found that Singaporeans were model
students:
Officials of Leeds, Glasgow,
Leicester and Loughborough Universities note that Singaporeans are
model students who pass with first class or second-upper
honours.
The University of Glasgow alone had
20 first class and 40 second-upper class honours among the
graduating batch of Singaporeans last year.
Here is where DPM Tony Tan’s role
came into play. DPM Tan said that while more graduates are needed
to keep the economy going (a shortfall of graduates was
expected even if NTU and NUS increased their intake), but that
increasing the intake was ruled out for fear that
it might “lower their standards” and cause them to become
“unmanageable”. His solution? Part of it was to instead
increase the intake of foreign students from
overseas (similar to overseas recruitment, no?) so as
to retain education standards, done probably in part to ensure NUS
and NTU were seen as world class education institutions which
foreigners would flock to:
Deputy Prime Minister Dr Tony Tan
revealed in Parliament that projections by the Ministry of Trade
and Industry indicated that Singapore needed 17,000 graduates a
year to service its economy.
With an intake of about 10,000 or
11,000 to NUS and NTU, there would still be a shortfall.
He ruled out expanding the
intake at NUS and NTU, saying that it could lower their
standards and cause them to become unmanageable
“mega-universities”.
The better options were to
increase the number of tertiary-level institutions and recruit
students from overseas.
In other words, if one is looking
to blame any minister for the huge influx of foreign students in
local Singapore universities and the huge brain drain of
polytechnic graduates who leave for overseas university education
(who are unfairly penalised due to consideration of ‘O’ Level
grades), DPM Tony Tan appears to be the minister responsible.
In his quest to ensure the
Singapore economy had enough graduates to keep it going and while
also trying to boost local university standards and international
appeal, DPM Tony Tan set in motion the policy which discriminated
against local students in favour of foreign students who, in some
apparent cases are not able to qualify for their own country’s
competitive university entrance exams.
Is this not a clear case of putting
foreign students ahead of locals? All in the name of boosting the
image of NUS/NTU over that of the locals. To make matters worse,
CPF money cannot be used for education overseas. Polytechnic
students who had to go overseas or resort to expensive college
education through distance learning have DPM Tony Tan to thank for
putting foreign students overseas ahead of locals.
It would not be the least bit
suprising if it eventually emerged that DPM Tony Tan was the brains
behind the policy which explicitly invites foreign students fully
sponsored by the Singapore government (and its taxpayers) to study
in NUS/NTU and offers them a PR (without the obligation of National
Service) upon graduation. Such an ill thought policy marginalises
local talents and swells the ranks of non-committed PRs who are in
Singapore only as a stepping stone to overseas universities. Here’s
an account by a forumer of how such a reverse-discriminatory
policy worked.
Now DPM Tony Tan says he might run
for President. Well when the voting comes, Singaporeans should keep
in mind the above.
Taken from:
http://furrybrowndog.wordpress.com/2011/06/08/former-dpm-tony-tans-foreign-talent-first-singaporeans-second-university-admission-policy/
