The letter “Five reasons to rethink MOE-AU scholarship” (March 13) has too narrow and specialised a focus on the issues involved. There are broader perspectives to consider and the Education Ministry is right to come up with the scholarship idea.
Those of us who have benefited from scholarships since our junior college days through university have not always ended up doing what the scholarships entailed, for instance, becoming teachers of English permanently or career civil servants.
Some who served in the Singapore Armed Forces after our training awards or scholarships, but did not further our military career, did, however, gain from the experience and the opportunity to hone leadership and organisational skills that stood us well in civilian environments.
It is time for a scholarship to channel those who are so inclined to a career in higher learning, teaching and research.
It is fallacious to argue that since someone in his late teens may not know what he wants, he should not be given long-term scholarships or placed in programmes he qualifies for that are subsidised.
How many students who go on to medical school are 100 per cent sure that they are right for medicine and the long-haul commitment a vocation as a doctor calls for?
Many who have taken the route towards medicine in their youth spend years, including rigorous ones to become a specialist, in a competitive field that deals with life and death.
Even if someone decides that an academic career is not right for them, the exposure and skills they should pick up would provide them insight, perhaps into being a responsible public intellectual.
We must build an intelligentsia here, though they need not be primarily academics. This is more important today, as scholars should be trained to participate in public discussions. We need a new generation to set a standard for discourse based on critical thinking.
This is crucial in an age when comments from trolls and online haters that only stir up negativity, rather than promote constructive dialogue or innovative solutions, often pass for intelligence. Singapore is short of thinkers.
The suggestion to hire Singaporean academics from elsewhere, rather than invest in our youth via scholarships to help fulfil their potential, misses the point of university autonomy. Is it the ministry’s role to decide whom a university chooses to hire?
If employment in academia is more challenging and institutions are more selective, the matter should be taken up with universities that tend to buckle to market forces and have their internal politics and agendas in hiring faculty.
The Government can only provide the best it can for aspiring academics and others. What individuals do with these opportunities depends on the person. There can be no laboratory-controlled expectations; we are dealing with people who are essentially autonomous.
Those of us who have benefited from scholarships since our junior college days through university have not always ended up doing what the scholarships entailed, for instance, becoming teachers of English permanently or career civil servants.
Some who served in the Singapore Armed Forces after our training awards or scholarships, but did not further our military career, did, however, gain from the experience and the opportunity to hone leadership and organisational skills that stood us well in civilian environments.
It is time for a scholarship to channel those who are so inclined to a career in higher learning, teaching and research.
It is fallacious to argue that since someone in his late teens may not know what he wants, he should not be given long-term scholarships or placed in programmes he qualifies for that are subsidised.
How many students who go on to medical school are 100 per cent sure that they are right for medicine and the long-haul commitment a vocation as a doctor calls for?
Many who have taken the route towards medicine in their youth spend years, including rigorous ones to become a specialist, in a competitive field that deals with life and death.
Even if someone decides that an academic career is not right for them, the exposure and skills they should pick up would provide them insight, perhaps into being a responsible public intellectual.
We must build an intelligentsia here, though they need not be primarily academics. This is more important today, as scholars should be trained to participate in public discussions. We need a new generation to set a standard for discourse based on critical thinking.
This is crucial in an age when comments from trolls and online haters that only stir up negativity, rather than promote constructive dialogue or innovative solutions, often pass for intelligence. Singapore is short of thinkers.
The suggestion to hire Singaporean academics from elsewhere, rather than invest in our youth via scholarships to help fulfil their potential, misses the point of university autonomy. Is it the ministry’s role to decide whom a university chooses to hire?
If employment in academia is more challenging and institutions are more selective, the matter should be taken up with universities that tend to buckle to market forces and have their internal politics and agendas in hiring faculty.
The Government can only provide the best it can for aspiring academics and others. What individuals do with these opportunities depends on the person. There can be no laboratory-controlled expectations; we are dealing with people who are essentially autonomous.
