What’s in store for international students

About one in five undergraduates at Singapore universities is an international

student. More will be arriving next month when the new academic year begins.
They will have to grin and bear a growing resentment against foreigners. A young
Singaporean journalist recently candidly admitted having mixed feelings about
foreigners competing with locals in the classroom, workplace and the property
market.

It’s significant she wrote this in The Straits Times, Singapore’s leading English daily,
which is never at odds with the government. Even Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
has spoken about the need to reduce the influx of foreigners.

High achievers can take heart, though. Singapore still “needs to bring in talent
from around the world”, he said, “to create a better future for us”.

International students with an excellent academic record can get scholarships and
government grants because Singapore wants the brightest and the best. But this
selectivity weeds out some of the local students, who can’t get a place in the
universities unless they make the grade. So the resentment against foreigners is
not without reason.

The competition can be stifling – even for elbow room. The MRT trains can be as
crowded as the Metro in Kolkata. The population has grown by nearly a million to
more than 4.9 million in the last 10 years. But the number of Singaporeans has
risen only from 3.2 million to 3.7 million. The rest are foreigners. And since they
include senior executives and wealthy businessmen, property prices have gone
through the roof. Young Singaporeans complain they can’t afford their dream
homes.

One should remember, though, the median monthly income in Singapore – earned
by half the workers – is S$2,400: more than Rs 80,000. Even though the money
doesn’t go as far as in Kolkata, Singaporeans can still afford the gizmos and gadgets
they crave. I recall a report in The Straits Times last year that the iPhone had lost its
cool factor because it wasn’t expensive enough.

Gadget-loving young Indians will take to Singapore like fish to water, and not only
because of the technology. It does feel like home when you can get idli and dosa at
almost any hawker centre and catch the latest Bollywood blockbuster at the local
cinema. The young undergraduates arriving next month will have to concentrate on
their studies, of course. Congratulations, guys. We know how selective the
universities are. The National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) accept only students with excellent grades; there’s
no separate entrance test. The Singapore Management University (SMU) requires
applicants to pass the SAT just like American colleges.
I have met young Indians who are happy and proud to be studying here. NUS was
ranked 30th and NTU 73rd on the Times Higher Education-QS World University
Rankings last year. Even renowned institutions like Berkeley and the University of
California, Los Angeles ranked lower than NUS. They were judged on their
academics’ reputation and research work, employers’ views on their graduates and
the student-faculty ratio among other things. The Singapore universities did well
partly because of their international students and international faculty. NUS
academics, in particular, are highly regarded in their fields.

But Singapore universities are not among the top 100 in the Academic Ranking of
World Universities. This is a list compiled by China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University,
which looks at whether there are Nobel Prize winners among the alumni and the
faculty and whether a university has highly cited researchers whose work has
appeared in prestigious journal s such as Nature and Science. The Indian Institute of
Science and IIT, Kharagpur, are both ranked higher in their fields than NTU on this
list.

Most young Singaporeans, if they win government scholarships, prefer to study in

America and Britain. But a Singapore education is a good deal, nevertheless. It’s a
lot cheaper than studying in the West. International students, if not on a
scholarship, can get a tuition grant from the Ministry of Education to cover their
expenses. In exchange, they are bonded to work in a Singapore-registered company
for three years after their graduation. That’s okay. Some stay on in Singapore after
serving their bonds.