Yale NUS tie up in pursuit of academic excellence

The setting up of this Yale NUS College must have cost quite a bomb financially. The object must be academic excellence, if not the product ie graduates, must be a college of bright professors living here to show the world we have the brightest talents money can buy. Its existence should take NUS or Singapore tertiary education up a notch, not the kind splashed across the media in rankings here and there. It must be real substance, either in producing great thinking graduates or great academics sharing their great thoughts on this little island, the merits of the latter is like pasting someone’s backside on our face. The former should be more desirable and the latter would be more like having more foreign table tennis players to show the world that we are also great in table tennis, great as long as money can buy greatness.

Yale has a great history and tradition in liberal arts and humanities, must be or we would not be inviting them here. This must have been brought about by the academic freedom, freedom of speech and thoughts in America, that make Yale a great university. And this can become a problem as academic freedom, freedom of the mind and thinking process are crucial ingredients to producing great thinking minds and great thoughts. And there has been a big tussle on this with some in Yale calling for a curtailment of this association. Singapore is just not the place for academic freedom in liberal arts and the teaching of humanities. They must have their points and beliefs to put up such a strong resistance.

While the college is ready to take in students in August, the debate is still going on and the intensity is not letting up. Now they have recommended a panel of Yale and NUS academics and administrators ‘to advise the new liberal arts college on issues that may arise, including academic freedom and discrimination’. This must be another first to have such a panel to advise and police a liberal arts college on academic freedom. And this is no joke. Hopefully the presence of this eminent panel of freedom guardians would not add to the cost of this expensive set up and raise tuition fees or increase govt grants to the college. And there is no further need to set up another committee of foreign dignitaries and academics to oversee this panel.

I wonder if it would be cheaper to send out students to Yale directly, with govt subsidies than to set up the college here? I also wonder if the environment here will be conducive or equivalent to that in Yale for the teaching of liberal arts or would it be money spent all for nothing but a fish? What is this Yale NUS model meant to be or to achieve? Is this the pathfinder for a more liberal Singapore or a more liberal academic environment for the fermenting and formenting of contrarian views and thoughts that may not be embraced by the authority? Is Singapore attempting to take the slow boat to freedom of expression, academic freedom and the American way?

How much is all this going to cost or already spent? Why are NUS and the other local universities not good enough? Would Yale NUS make a difference?