Singapore has always been a country with a good reputation, but the recent issues that had happened during the past few days affected the whole idea of branding of Singapore. My previous post was about the government trying to improve our reputation but here we have news about a university pulling out of Singapore
I believe most of us know that UNSW issues about facing a crisis where they don’t have enough students and also reports shows if this continue, the university will lose even more amount of money. Going back to 2004, Singapore first announced the 4th university, which will be UNSW, afterwards, many people have been eagerly waiting for the registration and wonder how will it affect Singapore’s idea of making it an education hub here by attracting both local and foreign students. Now the sudden announcement of the closure of UNSW, has both shocked the students and the people here. Students there were outraged by this decision, lessons have started, fees have been paid and now the closure has left these students speechless and powerless. A petition signed by the students has been submitted, but the chances of UNSW staying here is almost impossible.
I realized that UNSW felt that they are coming over here to do business, and realizing that their business isn’t progressing well, they decided to pull out. At the end of the day, it’s the students that suffer. Apologizing isn’t going to help much, some of the students have reject local universities like NUS and NTU just to try out the new university here, and now they are on the verge of having no place to study. Reports also showed that foreigners opted to study here is because they trust Singapore and with the respectable reputation that Singapore has allow them to make their decision to come here.
The important issue now is both the government and university owe the students an explanation, some 100 over students have no other university to go to, although the local universities have reopen their application for them, but I doubt that there are any places left considering that some of the students have rejected the places given to them. The idea of making Singapore into an education hub has worsen due to this incident, the reputation will definitely be affected after this incident and let’s hope that the government do something about it, after so many news about boosting Singapore’s reputation, things now are starting to change.
Well, perhaps my previous post about praising the government has made me wonder are they really doing a good job about handling all these issues, I guess only time will tell.
Why are you holding this business up to a different standard than any other business? When the Siemens warantee outlet in Bugis closed, all customers were left without a repair centre in the country to handle their phones. But do we cry out for those customers or blame the government for the closure? Why do we decide to blame the government in this situation?
If your response is because it’s education-related, then I’d love to hear your input on why you believe a private school should be held accountable in ways other private businesses are not.
This is fun. I like when you get political/philosophical in your reflections.