Universities fees were raised in concert last year. And they are doing it again this year, in concert again. Is there anything wrong when merchants acted together to raise prices, like the price of a cup of kopi in the kopitiams? My apologies, universities are not merchants.
This time they cited higher costs of talents, supplies and services and the expectations of students and the fee hikes are to defray these costs. So our students must be the best in the world by now with the frequent hikes to improve the quality of university education. Why are the employers still running to 3rd World countries to employ their talents and our graduates are found to lack the skills and talents needed? Or is it that the quality of our universities has always been sub par and we are still playing catching up with the 3rd World universities?
The fee hikes are in the region of 2.6% to 7.9% for NUS, 2.5% to 5% for NTU, 2% for SMU and 4% for SUTD. In monetary terms the increases range from $200, $850 and $1150 in NUS. The increase for PRs and international students will be higher. As an example, in SUTD, Singaporeans will pay 4% more while PRs 12% and international students by 16%. Polytechnic fees also go up with this hike.
Singaporeans are so lucky that the universities are upgrading their teaching quality every year with higher fees to buy better talents to teach them. At the rate it is going, all the top academic talents in the world will be bought by our universities and our graduates will be the best in the whole world that money can buy.
I only hope that this is true. I only hope that the employers stop rushing to 3rd World countries to employ their graduates and complain that our graduates are not good enough. I hope to see one or two of our local graduates be found fit to be the CEO of a local or foreign bank.
What to believe? You tell me lah.
