Angry man sells house to finance daughter's medicine study overseas

I just have to repost this letter from TRE here. The anger and sense of betrayal can be felt by every word in the letter. And this father is not alone. To make matters worst, many chao kar doctors from many dunno what universities are practising here and their academic credentials cannot hold a candle to the daughter mentioned in the letter. There are so many good Singapore sons and daughters being forced overseas, with parents having to sell house, pawn whatever, clean up their savings to finance their studies, only to realise that there is a great shortage of doctors and these sons and daughters of Singapore could have been trained to fill up the shortfalls. Instead, any chap palang doctors will do it seems.

Now please read on and feel the frustration of this father who can be anyone of us.

My daughter did fairly well in her ‘A’ level. She got 3As and 1B – B for Physics but scored As for the 2 most important subjects for medicine – Biology and Chemistry.


She applied to NUS and was rejected. Not even an interview. She has always wanted to be a doctor her whole life. Her studies in Biology and Chemistry were top-notched. She is very self-discipline and we never have problems telling her to do her homework or reminding her to study since young. When NUS rejected her, she cried day and night.

As parents, how can we see her cry like that? It really breaks our hearts. We then made a family decision and sold our 5-room flat to support her medicine study overseas. We moved back to my parents – imagine, both of us are now in the 50s and we have to live with my parents who are now close to 80s!

My daughter applied to the overseas universities and guess what, she was accepted by a few: Monash University, University of Western Australia, Imperial College. In the end, we chose University of Western Australia because it’s closer to Singapore and it’s also cheaper to study in Australia than in UK. Still, the tuition fee itself cost me at least A$200K+, not counting room and board. All in, it will be A$300K+. I’m glad to see her happily studying medicine in Australia now.

Reading this article (‘Doctor-to-population ratio improved through massive FT recruitment‘) even angers me further. Why are we taking in foreign doctors when we do not even want to give our own Singaporeans a chance? And to think that I’ve served NS, for what? Why is the government not taking care of our own people first??? The fact that my daughter was accepted by some of these good universities shows that she is absolutely qualified to study medicine. Furthermore, she is really passionate about it. Why is the government depriving her, our very own people, that opportunity? To add further insults, I’ve read here that these foreign doctors actually graduated from some of these dubious third world universities?

This is really a big screw up by our government. Instead of investing to train more Singaporeans to become doctors, we are recruiting more foreign doctors. This is totally unacceptable and I might add, a treacherous act by the government!

I’m actually quite apolitical but this incident of NUS rejecting my daughter to study medicine when other good universities are accepting her, has given me a new perspective. The fact that I have to sell away my house and move back with my parents who are close to 80s really hurts me a lot. At their age, I should be taking care of them and yet, they have to shelter my family! I have one more son, because of his sister’s influence, is more inclined to study biology and medicine. I really don’t know what to do if he decides to also study medicine and NUS rejects him too. I have no more houses to sell. The only left would be by then, I can take out my CPF and use it to finance his overseas study.

I really cursed this government!

One more thing I would like to add – Yes, I’ll be attending the May Day protest!

Angry father

PS. Can PAP survive 2016 when there is a groundswell in frustration and the feeling of betrayal?