A bad time to say goodbye

A bad time to say goodbye
By Lee U-Wen, TODAY | Posted: 25 May 2007 1016 hrs


Photos 1 of 1

Will the smiles remained?



SINGAPORE: The courtship went on for two years but the marriage that followed lasted just three years, ending in a shocking split on Wednesday.

When the news broke out that the University of New South Wales (UNSW) would be shutting down its Singapore campus next month, it was difficult to make sense of it all, coming just three months after the Australian institute opened its doors with much fanfare.

UNSW Asia blamed poor enrolment for its first two intakes this year - about 300 students enrolled, way below the target of 780.

With commitments to a A$700 million($879 million) 20-ha campus due to go up in Changi, the university pulled the plug now as it was not willing to continue pumping in millions of dollars.

Much has been, and will be, said, as one digests the fallout from the closure, but what sticks out like a sore thumb is the poor timing of the announcement.

The worst hit are the 148 students from the university’s pioneer intake — 100 of them Singapore residents — who have been told they still have to hand in all their projects and sit for examinations in just three weeks’ time.

What frame of mind will these youth be in as they enter the examination hall? Surely, there could have been some consideration from the management to bite the bullet for another month or so and then break the bad news after the exams were over?

The consolation offered to the students — guaranteed spots in UNSW Sydney and scholarships to help fund their travel and living costs — is a magnanimous gesture, but one that will only hide, not heal, the wounds.

As the shattered students and lecturers pick up the pieces and plot their next move, what’s clear is that UNSW Asia’s departure has left a blot on Singapore’s private education landscape.

With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps the relentless pursuit of an Australian university to establish a home here was not such a wise move, after all.

Australia’s proximity to Singapore could have made it less appealing to study at a local branch of an Australian university.

Without disrespect to UNSW, or any other Australian university, perhaps having a top-ranked European or American school — less accessible to students here — would have attracted the desired number of foreign students.

UNSW’s sudden exit — two years after Britain’s Warwick University chose not to come here because of concerns over creative freedom — has also raised the question of whether other foreign universities will leave Singapore out of their expansion plans.

I don’t think this will happen. Singapore has done well in attracting world-class schools, including New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, University of Nevada, Las Vegas and DigiPen Institute of Technology.

The Economic Development Board (EDB), which drives the global schoolhouse initiatives, believes it will still reach its target of attracting 150,000 foreign students by 2015.

While the EDB admitted that the UNSW Asia saga was a “setback”, I would like to think that there are some valuable lessons that we all can learn from this incident.

What the stakeholders should recognise and act upon quickly is that a lot of hard work — five years’ worth, no less — has already been put into the UNSW Asia project, and this should not go to waste.

The EDB has said that the closure will not mean that it would no longer work with the school. As I see it, the most logical way to continue the relationship would be to allow UNSW Asia to continue the research work it had planned in Singapore, in areas such as solar energy, and membrane and water technologies.

Or, the university could explore the model used by other foreign schools, which rent space in centrally located buildings for classes, while building their reputation and exposure.

Expansion can come later. Now’s not the time to point fingers but to see how all parties can salvage a broken relationship that started off with such promise. - TODAY/fa