Within a few years, the rankings of NUS and NTU have shot up by leaps and bounds. It is like out of the blue we are world champions or nearly there in table tennis and nothing else. And every time when the media proudly splashed in their pages that we were ranked higher than the Ivy League universities in the US and UK, my goose pimples popped up instantly. Really ah? Even if we are really better than these Ivy League universities, why are our graduates ended up as rejects and unable to compete for jobs in our very own country, in our very own system, in our very own companies, organisations and institutions? Never mind.
Our universities are flooded with foreigners in the administration, the teaching staff and among the undergrads and post grads. Is their presence part of the gaming process? If they are, I say if, cause I dunno, how much are we paying for all these foreigners just to put a mask over our face? Foreigners in administration and teaching staff, mostly academically highly qualified, don’t come cheap unless they are from Timbuktu. But Timbuktu doesn’t count for high rankings, so NG. And there is the often repeated complaints of hundreds of millions, by now could be billions of dollars, given as scholarships to foreigners. Are the scholarships and money spent part of the gaming process too?
Now what is the gain, what is the return if the money were spent on gambling. Shit, why did I say gambling? It must be the influence of the casinos or the big gamblers managing big funds. I mean gaming the system, not gambling the system. Ok, just to be clear, I am not saying anyone is gaming the system, I am just asking if we are gaming the system and what is the cost of gaming the system?
Before I forget, what is the gain? Like the medals for table tennis, what is the gain and is the gain worth it for the money spent? So what if our rankings are in high heavens. What is the point? It would be better to use the money to build a few monuments, maybe cheaper if the maintenance is low. Just don’t build monuments that need hundreds of millions for upkeeping and to provide jobs for highly paid foreigners.
Anyone knows if we are hooked on gaming the university ranking systems and who gives the green light if we are really doing it? It costs a lot of money that could be used for better things. My gut feel is that we cannot be so stupid to waste public money on such cheapo reputations. Our administrators would have better sense and circumspection not to waste public money. Our rankings are high because we are good and the presence of the foreigners is coincidental. There is nothing to it. Go look somewhere else. We don’t game the system for some cheapo unrecognised subjective rankings that really mean nothing.
Chua Chin Leng AKA RedBean
*The writer blogs at http://mysingaporenews.blogspot.com/