The postgraduate landscape of Singapore’s oldest university.
As Vice Provost (Academic Personnel) of National University of Singapore (NUS) – which celebrates its centenary in 2005 – Professor Lai Choy Heng is one of its most senior managers. Tony Martin reports Professor Lai’s insightful perception of NUS’s international postgraduate development.
A very large proportion of our postgraduate students is from overseas and in many faculties they form the majority. However, when we admit students, our main criteria for acceptance is not their country of domicile but their suitability for the course to which they are applying.
There are a lot of Asian students, particularly from China and India and from the Asean countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines with an increasing number now coming from Vietnam.We have some European students but relatively small numbers compared with Asia.
We have a significant number of exchange students from Europe but not so many full-time. More European students are enrolled on the joint programmes we now run with European universities such as the design technology programme with University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Also, some are on the programmes offered by Technische Universität München/German Institute of Science and Technology here in Singapore.
‘Ten years ago a Chinese student would prefer to go to an unheard of US or UK university rather than come to Singapore, but I think there’s been a tremendous reversal.’
The total number of graduate students is about 9,000 including those on part-time coursework programmes in engineering, science and MBA masters students. These number about 5,000 and of the remaining 4,000 about 60 or 70% are of foreign origin. Science and engineering account for the highest proportion of these while medicine and social sciences have more local students.
Of course there is demand in all directions and our business school cannot meet this demand.We have to be very selective and choose niche areas with a significant role and impact and we are very strong in MBA and especially Executive MBA. Fulltime MBA students are important as they go into management of organisations but our part-time EMBA students are important in establishing NUS as a top school and influencing recruitment to other MBA programmes.
Due to our regional position in commerce and banking, we do these things better in Singapore and they are an important part of our EMBA programme. At the other end of the spectrum, we are trying to beef up our PhD because it is important to have a good research basis for the reputation of the business school.We are not going to be seen as one that is purely commercial, worrying about prestige and money. In the institution overall we like our students to pursue academic excellence and we cannot do without the PhD part.
We are working very much along the lines of an American graduate school. So when we admit our graduate students it's not specifically to a masters course. They enter as graduate students and have to take a qualifying examination. If they pass that they become a candidate for a PhD.
MBA students tend to be of a different type – they tend to look at it more as a terminal qualification than as a preparation for a PhD. But some do progress to PhD. WHAT
Among the countries from which we are recruiting, Singapore is now becoming a possibility for masters and PhD. Until recently, students would have expected to go to the USA, UK, and Australia. But things have changed quite a bit. Ten years ago a Chinese student would prefer to go to an unheard of US or UK university rather than come to Singapore, but I think there's been a tremendous reversal.We have established ourselves as an excellent institution in quite a few areas, notably in engineering and in some areas of humanities, and our business school is up and coming. Our difficulty is in getting even higher quality candidates than we are getting now.We will never be satisfied! So this is a continuing challenge, but we are also beginning to diversify – looking outside China and also not just concentrating on Beijing and Shanghai but also on other major Chinese cities.We are trying hard to make headway in India. All short-listed PhD students are interviewed before admission so interview teams go to China twice a year, ditto for India. So far we have made less concerted effort in other countries.
SOME INSTITUTIONS ARE REPORTING A DOWNTURN IN CHINESE STUDENT APPLICATIONS – IS THAT THE CASE WITH NUS MASTERS AND PHD APPLICATIONS?Not at all. Problems with US visas mean that we are also getting an improvement in quality in the last year or two. Numbers of applications remain high. All our research students are financially supported and it's finding funds for this that is the hard part.
Our competitive strength, because of the situation Singapore is in, is providing niche areas that can give better returns, but graduate students don’t always think that way. Their decision is often reached by first thinking ‘where am I going?’ The way we address global competition varies from area to area. There's no avoiding competition when it comes to science and technology because it isn’t a local thing. So we are trying to portray our faculty as strong in these areas so that we can at least reach the same level of competence. But that’s not sufficient on its own – there are specific areas where we are capitalising on specific sources of our graduate enrolment. This includes regional logistics which is very important in serving the needs of regional students.We can do this better than anyone else. Our bio-medical sciences also offer a tremendous opportunity for regional students.
Well, that depends how big the region is! It is a very complex domain because it cuts into other science disciplines. If you acknowledge that, other universities – such as Tokyo and Beijing – have many more years’ experience in establishing regional science programmes. However what we are lacking in history, we are more than making up for in momentum and in government support, and in determination to play it big in this area. It doesn’t hurt to have world standard hospitals as it helps demonstrate our commitment to abide by international bio-safety standards. Of course, there is a vast difference for us as a small country than for large countries to reinforce and monitor bio safety standards. Our quicker response to the SARS epidemic helped give confidence to the outside world as to how strong we are in this area.
‘Not just a land of electronics experts but a society that is knowledge driven, knowledge dominated.’
I think we definitely have to! Singapore’s success here has hinged on our government's ability to see and plan for the future and stay one step ahead in industry.We don't have the manpower to compete so taking a lead in emerging technology – bio technology, nanotechnology, and chemical technology – has been a natural next step. These industries have an important common characteristic in that much of the science was not understood. Knowledge discovery and knowledge applications have run almost back to back and therefore influence each others development. You make applications of a new discovery and, in exploring its applications, this feeds back to the discovery process. This means that there is a certain risk and you cannot just look at applications, you need that knowledge generation. You cannot wait for someone else as by that time you would have fed back to their countries.
It’s very important for Singapore to develop an image of being a knowledge society, a knowledge nation – a lot of trained people, a lot of smart people. Not just a land of electronics experts but a society that is knowledge pursuing, knowledge driven, knowledge dominated.