Where the world meets
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Singapore's attitude of promoting both foreign and national institutions enables students to get "a wider spectrum of education options"
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Photo: By Special Arrangement
VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY: With Singapore's skyline looming in the background, a group of students gathered at a quay take in the scene even as they have their books spread before them.
Singapore remains the same even as it keeps changing. As a positive attribute, this helps the City-State retain its identity as a globalised place with a future it wishes to shape itself. In this endeavour, Singapore treats its own citizens and foreigners alike within its political domain, insofar as this can indeed be done.
This was in evidence during the mid-September annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank that the City-State hosted for the first time, predictably without any disruption by the anti-globalisation forces, which it does not encourage.
And, this is true as well of Singapore's attitude in encouraging foreign educational institutions, with marketable brands, to spread their wings across the city. At the same time, Singapore's own flagships of education are constantly promoted as models worthy of being chosen by both the local population and the international student community for their voyage of learning.
Choicest destination
It is in this milieu that various organisations, directly or indirectly linked to the Singapore Government, are carrying forward a regular hard sell of portraying their city as a destination of choice in Asia for higher studies and even basic education and junior-college courses.
Singapore's basic education is marked by a unique system of "streaming" the students into "special, express or normal" categories for academic or technical studies at the secondary stage of schooling. It is said, in defence of this debatable system, that avenues exist to ensure that late-bloom talent, a well-known phenomenon among the scientific and artistic fraternities, is not lost to society through a premature weed-out of students at a young age. Overall, the education mandarins of Singapore do not downplay the competition they face from some countries in their extended neighbourhood in projecting its pluses. But the noticeable mood in Singapore is to fashion new marketing techniques to attract students from nearby Asian countries and even places further a-field.
Summing up the hard-sell of "differentiating" the City-State from the perceived and potential competitors, Magdalene Lee, Director of Education Services under the umbrella brand of Singapore Education, said in a recent conversation that her country "is safe [and] cost-competitive compared to the U.S. and the U.K.," besides being the home to "some of the best institutions in the world."
Outlining the "variety of choices," she cited the Chicago Graduate Business School, INSEAD, and "of course, our NUS [National University of Singapore], NTU [Nanyang Technological University], Singapore Management University, and so on, the range." This South-East Asian mega-polis "is where the world meets," she maintained, mindful that her country would have to try and stay competitive on the international scene that was already dotted with emerging and established "business hubs."
Noting that several leading foreign universities, mostly private-sector brands, had also established campuses in her country in recent years, Ms. Lee said this signified "a wider spectrum of education options." As a local private-initiative enterprise, the Management Development Institute of Singapore is updating its marketing methods while celebrating its golden jubilee this year.
A relatively new phenomenon is the emerging competition among the foreign institutions in the city. A notable recent entrant on the global education scene in Singapore is XLRI Jamshedpur. India is widely recognised by the City-State's political leaders and education managers as a vibrant source of qualitative education. They would like Indian institutions to set up campuses or chapters in their South-East Asian mega-polis.
India and China figure as major education-leaders in the big picture that Singapore has envisioned to promote itself as a regional hub in this domain and to network with for economic success.
P.S. SURYANARAYANA
Education in Singapore
