$115,000 worth of bursaries
According to the Straits Times news report “$115,000 worth of bursaries awarded to students from low-income families (Jan 18) – ” Some 520 students from low-income families received more than $115,000 worth of bursaries at a presentation ceremony on Sunday morning.
They were awarded between $150 and $500 each at the Bishan-Toa Payoh GRC Citizens’ Consultative Committees event.
$1m of bursaries past 5 years
He added that close to $1 million has been disbursed to students over the past five years.”
$400m on foreign students
- Since our annual spending on foreign students is estimated to be $400 million – the estimate for five years is $2 billion – compared to this miserable $1 million.
According to the MOE Education Digest 2014 (page 47) – Government recurrent expenditure on university students was $2.9 billion in 2013/14.
So, we spent about 37 per cent ($400m divided by $2.9b) on foreign students – on a relative basis.
University expenditure lags GDP growth
Recurrent expenditure per university student (page 49) increased in real terms (inflation was 34 per cent) by about 1.4 per cent per annum from $14,112 in 1999/00 to $21,839 in 2013/14.
GDP growth for the period was about 5.7 per cent per annum.
In other words, unlike most countries which spent more than the increase in GDP on university education – we spent about 4.3 per cent lesser than GDP growth.
Development expenditure declining
Government development expenditure on “university” has been declining gradually from $341 million in 1999/00 to $321 million in 2013/14, to as low as $118 million in 2008/09 and only $192 million in the previous year (2012/13).
In real terms, the decrease comparing 1999/00 and 2013/14 is about 40 per cent.
In conclusion, we have spent too much on foreign students (and I have not even factored in the costs for PRs), at the expense of Singaporeans.
Win battles lose war
TRS Contributor