A different kind of World Cup

Not too long ago Singapore was aspiring to be in the World Cup by buying foreigners to play football for the country. It was a wet dream that was best forgotten. Now Singapore is in the World Cup of a different kind. NUS is ranked number Two best university in Asia after Tokyo Unversity and 29th in the whole wide world.

This is indeed something to cheer about. Maybe next year Singapore will be number One in Asia and up from the 29th in the world. It is a mean feat, a great achievement. So, how is Singapore going to benefit from this ranking? Is NUS now recognised as a great academic institution of higher learning? Must be. Is NUS producing some great intellectual minds to do Singaporeans proud? Must be. And there must be a lot of great professors in NUS to give it the ballast it needs to be recognised as one of the best in the world. No need to ask if the great minds there are Singaporeans or foreigners. NUS is even better than Tsinghua and Peking University.

Maybe in 30 years time we will hear and read about great names like Emeritus Professor Tan Khee Giap, or Emeritus Professor Eugene Tan, or Emeritus Professor Yaacob Ibrahim, or Emeritus Professor Kishore Mahbubani. Never mind if the renowned professors now have foreign names and credentials. We will make it there, in 30 or 50 years.

And also we could look forward to some Nobel Prize winners in Physics, Engineering, Medicine or Humanities. Hope they will be Singaporeans. New citizens also can. That is what great universities are for. I dunno how much have been spent to acquire such a brand and how much more to produce more world renowned local professors and Nobel laureates. It is money well spend, every cent of it.

And don’t forget, we have two think tank schools in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy and the Rajaratnam School of International Studies staffed by some of the best brains money can buy. Together, Singapore will become famous as an intellectual centre where great minds meet to talk about great stuff. We can forget about being the top casino centre in Asia. This is the Singapore Renaissance. We have the best universities, the best intellectuals all in this island. The only reservation, an unthinking population that needs the help of Third World talents to help it to progress or it will return to Third World very soon. We are still dependent on Third World talents to provide the talents for our economy and industries.

Thus, despite the high rankings of NUS, I remember making a suggestion that Singapore students should enrol in Indian Universities if they intend to seek employment in Singapore. The Indian Universities may have rankings far lower than NUS but they have the right formula and their graduates are in great demand here, and institutions and big companies have greater preference for their graduates than local graduates, or at least the head hunting companies. The general comments are that our local graduates are only good in grades but daft and lack motivation and EQ. Now I am not sure if my suggestion is the right thing. Perhaps with this high ranking, the employers will now look more favourably at graduates of NUS in preference of graduates from Third World countries. I really hope so, I really hope the ranking makes a difference, a meaningful ranking.

But never mind, when NUS becomes number One in Asia, we should have a national holiday declared and street celebrations in town. Looks like China’s and India’s universities would have to start spending more money to employ western professors if they think they want to beat Singapore’s universities in ranking. Money is all it takes to up the ranking.