[redbean]

Ha elle. I like your confidence!
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[elle]

rb, that is because it is obvious by the very performance of Singaporeans on this site.

[redbean]

So, it is Aware's fault?

Eng Hen has spoken and that Aware's programme can only be reintroduced after it has regained the public's trust. That settles one part of the issue. The second part is how the Aware programme was allowed to be taught in the way it did for so long, and actually accepted as normal without anyone from the MOE raising an eyebrow? In fact the initial reaction from MOE official is that there were no complaints or the noises put up were groundless, unjustified emotions.

Who gave the go ahead or why was there no ongoing assessment and auditing to make sure that the content was safe or acceptable? If not for the hooha, the programme would still be taught to the children without anyone getting wiser.

Would there be a review and an explanation on this second part of the issue? Are the confidence and trust in MOE affected by this slip? Or MOE is totally free of blame, nothing to do with it?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[elle]

Is it possible to encapsulate Aware's programme? I know nothing about Aware and its aims. I do not want to spend too much time looking it up.

[redbean]

Fake degrees in the Education Hub

We want to be the premier education hub of Asia. We want to attract hundreds of thousands of foreign students here to pursue their studies. We had a spate of frauds coming from the private school providers. Now we have more revelations of fake degrees being offered over the years, undetected. Undetected!!! My god!

Could all these be avoided? Is it so difficult to weed them out before they even enrol the students? It cannot be that difficult than sending man to the moon. Alas, the squeaky clean and administratively efficient state is now no better than a third world country. How could we be an international education hub when such simple frauds like accreditation from reputable institutions can get pass so easily? It is definitely a case of negligent, no one or organisation being assigned to administer it. Another equivalent of selling toxic products.

Come on Singapore, you can do much better than this, to allow such blatant frauds to exist right under your nose, Terribly disappointing. Exactly like the motor insurance fraud. Nobody's child, nobody's problem. Not my problem.

Soon we will be known as an island of super first world infrastructure but operated by third world conmen and tricksters. This is a reputation we cannot afford to live with.

Rip Van Winkle is still enjoying his nice nap.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Would Singapore become another Mexico?

Brookes Business School was ordered to close by the MOE for issuing fake degrees. Now its subsidiary, Stamford Global Learning is also ordered to close. The former had 400 students while Stamford Global has 40. How would this affect Singapore's reputation as a world class education centre? Would Singapore be avoided like Mexico from the H1N1 flu, in this case, fake degree flu? To quote an affected China student, 'If people in China hear about this, fewer of them will come to Singapore.'

This is not the first time such things happened. Is it so difficult to avoid such a mess? Just a few phone calls to the universities concerned will do the trick. Maybe it is too troublesome, too big a job. Maybe it is nobody's responsibility. Oh, free market, self regulations, caveat emptor.

Now I am wondering how serious is this fake degree flu and how far it is going to spread. Totally irresponsible.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

We have this great bull story in the media again

We are short of talents. Companies cannot find enough of accountants and finance professionals. And recently we even bragged so loudly that we are recruiting doctors and medical professionals in big numbers from all over the world.

My take is that either our tertiary institutions were are sleeping and not producing enough qualified candidates to feed the needs of the economy, or that our graduates were of no talents and not good enough for the industry. So either we don't have the head counts or plenty of useless, half baked and unemployable graduates.

So, the lack of local talent must be true. All the statistics and surveys say so. What are we going to do about it? Apply the instant tree formula and go and recruit from all over the world, including graduates from third world and universities ranked lower than our esteemed local universities.

Why did I get this feeling that something is not right? How could world class universities not producing graduates that are considered as talents and graduates from less than world class universities are grabbed like hot properties, great talents? If our universities are producing non talents, then we might as well close them down and save the money. And forget about the 4th university.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

DBS netted a Foreign Talent again

Champagne popped yesterday and another round of celebration as DBS announced that it had successfully searched and found another foreign talent to helm the bank. The appointment of Piyush Gupta, a PR, was welcomed as another great achievement and would do DBS a lot of good in its banking business though it also announced that nothing would change and business as usual. There were happy faces everywhere.

The appointment of another PR in the number one govt bank is, sad to say, another confirmation of our failure in nurturing and developing our local talents for the big league. And we have been doing this over and over again for the last few decades and still repeating the same formula without any wiser.

Our local talents that were sent overseas to the best Ivy League universities in the US and Europe are still unfit to be the CEO of a local bank and many of our big organisations. And they will never be, if things are not changed. Our formula is simple. Send our best to foreign universities with a long string attached. On completion of their 4 years of studies, pull the string and haul them back to our little ponds to be fed and grow fat, like the kois. Big and beautiful to look at, full of fat.

And when we need marlins, sharks and whales to swim in the oceans, expectedly none will be fit for the job. So we will forever be dependant on foreign talents to fill jobs that require exposure and experience in the international arena. Our mandarins are experienced only to swim in the little fish ponds. Maybe the 4 years of exposure to the local lifestyle will equip them with enough knowledge to buy kindergartens, theatres, hotels and landed properties. Maybe football clubs with be next.

In contrast, India and some other countries allowed their best to stay on in America and Europe, join the big league MNCs, and grow with them. They were sent to swim the seven seas, brave the storms, and survived, fit and all muscles, to take on the world. It is thus not unexpected for our local organisations with big dreams of going international to be dependant on foreign talents, and forever, if our policy on nurturing and developing our own talents is not changed. We will continue to breed ponds of beautiful and fat kois, but no marlins, no sharks and no whales.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Circular reasoning to the rescue

The appointment of Piyush Gupta as CEO of DBS has apparently been warmly received if the reports in the media are to go by. But the underlying sentiment that was not reported but can be sieved through by reading between the lines tells a different picture. This foreign talent fad or infatuation must have stirred the hornet nest of talented locals who see their aspirations being squashed once again. So there must be some way to explain away this great acquisition of a foreign talent that is deemed better than all the useless local talents.

Siow Li Sen wrote that for those who are criticising the recruitment, let there be no worry. Piyush Gupta will become a citizen soon. So he will become a local talent, a Singaporean. How many will lap up this kind of excuse?

And the better part, we went around the world, with high expectations and specifications for the most qualified candidate, with great talent and experience, only to claim that no change is needed in the new job. 'DBS does not need fixing'. No need to take needless risks. Then why can't a local be good enough?

Oh, at home, he has to tackle a mountain of deposits to make them work and to regain Singaporeans' trust in the structured notes fiasco. Do you need a foreign talent to tackle these local issues?

But, like it or not, the die has been cast. Now more analyses and reports on how good this move to hire a foreign talent was will be churned out. The spin doctors will be put to work to appease the hurt ego of the locals. In the meantime, it is better for local talents to find employment in foreign banks to prepare themselves for such jobs.

Decorative kois are for display only. My bet is that our decorative kois are any time of higher quality than these foreign talents if given the opportunities. At least, while in schools and universities, our local talents would have outshone many of the foreign talents. What our local boys lacked are opportunities, exposure and experience. If we don't give these to them, who would?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

A new enlightenment has dawned on Singapore

Linguistic skill is not directly linked to intelligence. Singaporeans are finally enlightened to this fact. A Mrs Goh Su San wrote to the ST forum to salute LKY for telling it to the people. This Mrs Goh narrated the anguish and pain she and her family had to go through when their two sons fared badly in the Chinese Language in schools and they had to uproot from Singapore to settle in a foreign land. And loo and behold, their two sons blossomed and are now professionals in their chosen fields.

The victims of language policies are not confined to just the second language, in particular Chinese Language. In the days of Senior Cambridge Examination, a student could have a string of As. But if he failed the English Language, he was a goner. No place in A level. And for those who did not pass GP in A Level, no place in the university. Failing the English Language was as good as failing the whole examination.

How many brilliant students were lost through this language policy? It is history now. On the other hand, a student with a credit in English and all the donkeys and elephants could be admitted to the university. And many ended up as highly acclaimed intellectuals because to their university degrees and the command of the English Language, while the failures in the English Language could at best try their luck in business or else ended up in some clerical jobs or as mechanics.

But it is better late than never that we are enlightened to this great truth today. With this great discovery, we could be entering an age of renaissance. Thank god, we are wiser now.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Why Singapore Universities are not going to be the best

A good university, a world best university, is easily recognizable by the products of the university. Off the cuff people would be able to rattle off a list of universities that they feel or know, are world class. Singapore universities not one of them for sure.

Forget about scoring points in Times assessment criteria or whatever criteria from whatever agencies. Our A level students would be able to fill the score sheets with a string of As if they are made to achieve those mechanical criteria, which unfortunately do not make a university world class.

Simply put, other than the infrastructure and facilities, it is the academic staff and the quality of students enrolling in the university that count. No matter how good the infrastructure and facilities, regardless of the best academic staff money can buy, fill the university with chimpanzees and out will come chimpanzee graduates.

Why are the top universities in the US and UK world class? It’s elementary Watson! They have the world’s best students there. The cream of the world’s students are gravitated to those universities, including our top students to make them world class. And years down the line some of these students will be top leaders or elites of their countries to do their alma mater proud and recognised. If our top students are not in our own universities, if we are unable to recruit the best students here, how can our university be good, producing champions?

By the way, what’s the point of having the best students from the world in our universities other than a bit of rubbing off their bright sparks? What is important is to educate our best to be the best in our own universities. This must be our priority. Having the best academics here, having the best foreign students here, must be for this purpose. It is not our responsibility to educate the best students from the world only to return home. We need our best for our own interests. And if our universities are to be the best, it must contribute to this goal, to benefit the country, not just for the sake of being the best at all cost.

This article is from www.asiancorrespondent.com
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

The Singapore Education Brand - Does anyone bother?

This guy handed me his name card and it read, Dr Boh Tak Cheh, CEO, Karanguni Enterprise. He gave me that big and confident smile, telling me that he had arrived. He owned a very big and successful business in collecting old and secondhand goods and resell them for profits. He had done well. He told me that his good friend, the headman of Sungei Road Thief Market, as it was well known for selling secondhand and stolen goods, has also acquired a doctorate from a foreign university which he did not know where. Many successful Singaporeans are now flashing their doctorates in their name cards. For these new towkays, they have done exceedingly well in their businesses. I always tell them that they don't need that stupid degree to be respectable. When Dr Boh Tak Cheh parks his Mercedes 400 at the entrance of the hotel, the doormen will all rush to open his car door. I have to quietly sneak in myself without anyone noticing that I have been there.

People like Dr Boh would probably be directors of several companies and chairmans of many social and business organisations. We should salute such men and women who have done well and contribute to society in their own ways.

What is troublesome is that there are many unaccredited colleges that claim to be universities and setting up shops here to issue degrees to the point that Singapore has appear in the infamous list of unaccredited institutions and degree mills of the Oregon's Office of Degree Authorisation. The six Singaporean institutions named in Sandra Davie's article in the ST are Cranston University, Templeton University, Trident University of Technology, Vancouver University Worldwide, Westmore University and the last one, with the gumption to call itself Lee Community College, also set up business here.

For several years since the liberalisation and the ambition plan to turn Singapore into an education hub, the education scene is like no man's land. Quite a number of private schools have failed and left students, both foreign and locals, stranded, wasted their time and money cheated. As if these were not enough signals to warrant some kind of enforcement, things seems to go on as per normal. Nothing happen leh.

Other than the diminishing value and credibility in the Singapore Education Brand, the saddest part is that innocent students came to be swindled off their hard earned money, and some wasted years all for nothing. Anyone feeling guilty or responsible? In a hotel when there is no ownership and everyone only thinks about his big bonus and holidays, such neglect is a likely outcome. When will god get angry?

Despite the setbacks, there are many honorable people who have came into the education scene and have filled a gap for the hungry students who wanted to further their studies. They have done a noble job to provide the opportunities that are otherwise not there, for students to chase their dreams for a better education and a better life. The works of these honorable people in providing education to those who needed them could be tarnished and negatively affected by the sheer lack of enforcement to ensure that the black sheep are weeded out.

When education is not about education but making money, indiscretion and fraud are bound to be occur. This is not restricted just to this industry. Medical health, insurance, legal services, the financial industry etc etc, are also victims to this profit making mindset, when making money supercedes all considerations, even ethics and morality.

This article is copied from Asian Correspondent.

How long will the Singapore Brand be battered before it goes into the gutters? Who is responsible?
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

1 D and 2 ungraded subjects for A level

A blogger from UK posted a comment in www.mysingaporenews.blogspot.com that a student with the above grades was admitted for a degree course in management by a 'university'. He could not confirmed the name but thought it was unlikely to be SIM or SMU. He did mentioned something like SUM.

Would there be any university or 'university' in Singapore admitting students with such grades? The fact that this piece of news travelled all the way to UK speaks a lot about the going on's in the education scene here. And it cannot be good news. People are starting to raise the red flag, questioning the quality of our education hub.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Protecting fees of private schools students

The Ministry of Education has come up with new regulations under the Private Education Act to protect students from losing their tuition fees paid in case of the schools closing down. The change means that private schools can now collect only two months of fees in advance or 6 months if they purchasing a fee protection insurance. With these changes private students can at worst lose a few months of their fees. What a big help. Is money the only thing that needs protection? What about the wasted time, the anguish, and the psychological consequences of a young student being caught in such a dilemma? Hehe, we can only think of money. Money is our culture.

Then students were told to be vigilant. It is still caveat emptor! Does the authority think that the culprits or cheats that caused the mess need to be punished as well? Where is the big stick? They should have learnt from the stock exchange where little human mistakes of a few hundred dollars can result in thousands of dollars of fines. Mind you, it is human error and not fraud or bad intention. The punitive penalties have struck fear in the remisiers for making mistakes. But mistakes they will make as they are not demigods or immortals. And they will be very very careful.

The MOE should adopt a similar policy and strike fear among the fraudsters and cheats in the private education industry. Make the punishment punitive and fearful enough to keep them away. Here we are talking about crimes and bad intention and these must surely deserve more severe punishment than pure human errors. Without such punishment, the lure of easy money from innocent and vulnerable foreign students will be too attractive for the cheats to continue what they are doing. The MOE must send out a strong signal that they mean business and has the resolve to want to clean up the industry of such pests.

Is this a case of treating the symptoms or dealing with the cause?

The above article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.

[redbean]

Taking a different dig at the private education scene

The editorial of the Straits Times applauded the new measures to protect students from premature closure of private schools. The additional requirements by the MOE will give students some peace of mind, at least they would not lose all their money, and there is an option of placement in other private schools. What was not addressed is the time and effort lost while being a student of fly by night schools or con shops. The other good things are Singapore's reputation as an education hub and the Singapore Brand which will be protected in some ways.

Looking at the other side, a lot of people will lose their jobs or income. The ST editorial says it is a good thing to let the weaker private schools close shop. When that happens, the teaching staff and administrative staff will lose their jobs if more private schools find it difficult to operate here. The landlords will not be able to let out their office space, and all the people in the supporting industry will be affected. The value of commercial properties will go down as well. That is bad for those who have plonked their money in such properties.

What will happen is that with more controls it will restrain the entrepreneur spirit of the businessmen to make a quick buck. Don't forget that this is one of the secrets of our success story. Entrepreneurship will be curtailed. This is bad too as we are promoting entrepreneurship for those who have lost their jobs. Making money opportunities will also be limited. This is contrary to what private education is all about. The private educationist and entrepreneurs will disagree with this. They will definitely insist that private education is about education. Is it or it isn't is subjective. I concede that the good private schools are doing a good job in providing the opportunities for students to get their education when the public schools could not offer them. This is a very good cause and reason for private schools.

We have a conflict of interest don't we? We want to provide education and also make money but we can't have it all with more restrictions on the entrepreneurs or cheats. A possible solution to have the cake and eat it is to have two kinds of private schools. One will have full govt endorsement and abide by all the good regulations. In another sector, let it be free for all, no regulations and students beware, caveat emptor hor. And I think many would love that, including some special groups of students, and the cheat operators of course. There is a market for bogus schools, really, not bluffing. Not a bad suggestion isn't it? Catering for the good, the bad and the ugly. And we will have a very vibrant education scene and more foreign students will come to our shore.

The above article is copied from Asian Correspondent.
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what i posted is just my personal view. feel free to disagree.