6/06/2007

Education hub or leper's island

This one is accredited by MYCS and MOE and CaseTrusted. Froebel Academy has not only owed salaries to its teachers, it is not issuing certificates to its students after completing their courses. Some did not get their certificates since December last year. After the camped out, they promised that the certificates will be issued this Friday. The certificates were supposed to have two chops, one from an East China University and another from the Academy as endorsements or credibility of the certificates. Over the news it was reported that the chop from the University would cost the students another $7,500. This was denied by the Academy. The net effect is that the students were very unhappy for their plight. And the Academy told the students it is closing down. How many of such fiascos can the Singapore Education Hub takes before it earns itself the reputation of an education leper's island? It is high time that the ministry persecute these operators for the damage that they are doing to the Singapore brand. Another few of these incidents will turn the Singapore brand upside down. It will become a brand of ill repute. We should not tolerate such violations and quickly put our house in order before more damages are done. We are losing our credibility and reputation very fast.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I said this before in one of the posts related to UNSW: If you can't afford the real deal, you go for the imitation at your own peril. These so-called students must be really dumb to be forking out $$$ to get a certificate issued by some half arsed Chinese university.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

they may not. but they could be enticed all because of the singapore brand. i think many foreigners trust our brand. but this may become a thing of the past soon.

and froebel academy! what an attractive foreign sounding name. the name must have carried a lot of weight too.

Anonymous said...

Who cares? Singapore is a marketplace.

Sure we weed out outright fraud, but because education is generally un-regulated, its up to the students to decide how they want to study.

Students come to Singapore for more reasons that to get a piece of certificate.

Your focus on the certificate is pathetic.

Some come here to work quietly, Some come here to get married, some come here for extended stay.

How about that they did learn something during the course?

Anonymous said...

Sure, you may be right but at the end of the day, the issuing institute carries a lot more clout with employers than what you may have learned during the course. If you were an employer, would you consider employing someone with an MBA from the Robert Mugabe University ? :)

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

dear anonymous 9.22,

your one track mind is rather simplistic. i believe you are a ft and here to make hay while the sun shine. in your posts, you do not bother whether singapore will continue to exist in the longer term.

to you, it is caveat emptor, those people got cheated, they deserved it. to me, a singaporean, i am concerned about the singapore brand, the reputation of singapore and whether it can succeed in becoming an education hub.

and the option of learning for the sake of learning is a luxury of the rich. as anonymous 10.02 said, they are here for the paper chase. the paper is for them to 'tan chiat' after their stay here. and without the chop from a univerity, the froebel chop is worthless.

the students paid from their hardearned income.

you can spill your ruthlessness here without any compassion for the victims of fly by night or unscrupulous operators. as a singaporean, i will support the govt to take tough actions against such operators even if they are singaporeans. they are destroying the reputation of the country and all singaporeans.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how much planning and thought have the Government put in trying to realise our dream of becoming an education hub.

Just relying on the Singapore brand and let things work out on a trial and error basis is not doing us any good. Neither is it good for us to go into damage control mode after things go terribly wrong, especially when a lot of foreign students are going to be involved.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

so far this is the most casually managed industry. leaving it to market forces is like letting the wolves out to dress like grandmothers and waiting for little red riding hoods to come along.

the operators are all singaporeans who are engineered to go for the rip off if they can get away with it with no qualms on how the victims will suffer. ethics and moral obligations are non existence in the new singaporean mindset. make money, make money.

Anonymous said...

Redbean, simplistic or not, the fact of the matetr is your own government does not care about the plight of the students who were fleeced, so why should anybody else ? Isn't it also a fact that at the end of the day, you make the final call whether to part with your hard-earned money ? And for the record, what the hell is this Singapore brand ? About the only people who have bandied this term about are Singaporeans. No wonder the only people who have fallen for this 'Singapore brand' scam are Singaporeans themselves and naive citizens of third world countries like China. Hahaha

Anonymous said...

Anon 2.03. If you must know, Singapore brand is just an empty chest-thumping slogan. It is not even worth the air used to utter the term, not to mention carries absolutely no wieght at all outside of this pathetic booger the Singaporeans call their country.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

the singapore brand is what we bragged about and pat ourselves on how great we are. it is for internal consumption. that is true.

however, this brand is still good to some third world countries like china and india and asean countries. we are still better than them in many ways.

the other point i want to make is that we cannot let the word caveat emptor be used for daylight robbery. consumers should open their eyes. but there must be laws to stop the unscrupulous to go out and cheat people of their money.

if we accept caveat emptor as the cardinal principle, then we might as well live under the law of the jungle.

Anonymous said...

So, that's why the govt is reluctant to crack down on those errant operators. Coz if they do, then it will reveal that the Singapore brand is indeed one big con job.

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

not really. the brand has been built over the last 40 years. there are some respectability on our model and work ethics.

but this is fast eroding. and what these operators are doing will only hasten the destruction of our image.

40 years to build and 4 days to destroy. this is the reality.

Anonymous said...

Apparently, PRCs are here to study because they didn't qualify for uni back home. Note that they are after the East China Uni chop which will allow them to look for jobs back home.