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>UNIVERSITY undergraduate expansion here has been growing at a rate planners think is optimal. Known requirements are the market worth of degrees offered and the preservation of academic standards. On these scores, the two older universities have been rigorous. Singapore Management University has also kept enrolments small but this is necessitated by its specialised offerings and tight city location. The same care for quality control is evident in the modest 2,500 places that is now known will be offered when Singapore's unnamed fourth university accepts its first students. Modest, that is, relative to what degree-seeking students and anxious parents think ought to be the rate of increase in intake. Even the paucity of disciplines - known to be concentrated on business, design and engineering - shows a caution in not turning university education into an assembly-line operation.
Are the planners being too cautious? Is the thinking dated in the light of scholastic demand that is a compulsion in a post-modern world? The 2007 OECD survey on higher education reports that 95 per cent of Korean youngsters aged 15 expect to go to university. The overall OECD average is 57 per cent. A comparative study done here could produce a figure close to South Korea's. To recast the argument, is denying undergraduate places to eligible applicants who increase in number each year storing up social resentment? Can the nation afford to not educate those who seek a first degree? Application numbers argue for faster expansion. The three universities received 58,606 applications this year, with most applicants putting down two choices or all three. Some were repeat applicants, having failed to get in last year. Many of these youngsters will be eliminated as the total enrolment for the 2008-09 academic year is 14,700. Each year, 3,000 polytechnic graduates and untold numbers of the junior-college cohort go abroad to study. Tuition fees are out of control as foreign students are a rich revenue source. A four-year course in Australia or Britain will cost a quarter-million Singapore dollars - no small beer. Charity should begin at home,
It is easier for the new university, a start-up venture on elastic expansion space, to raise its enrolment target, since NUS and NTU are facing growth constraints. Having branch campuses of foreign universities is an option, but the experience with the University of New South Wales and Warwick University has not been good. It is not too early to get cracking on the fifth university, even a sixth. Experience has shown that quantity and quality can co-exist. Singapore's adherence to quality standards is reflexive and planners should also stop thinking only of marketability in planning for higher education.
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