07 September 2021

The National University of Singapore’s College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) brings together the best of the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the NUS Faculty of Science.

It aims to prepare Singapore students to tackle grave challenges facing the world, such as like climate change, cyber security. These issues pay little heed to disciplinary boundaries.

Separately, the Faculty of Engineering and the School of Design and Environment will also be merged. These mergers help usher in the age of interdisciplinary education, at least, in Singapore’s universities.

As Singapore accelerates its interdisciplinary drive in higher education, some challenges need to be addressed. One concern would be whether depth of knowledge will be compromised. Assuming fixed teaching hours, it is inevitable that some depth will have to be traded off for greater breadth. Furthermore, with information now becoming outdated faster, the excessive specialisation seen in the past could even be counterproductive.

02 September 2021

The annual Listening Educator for Advancement and Progress (Leap) award recognises exceptional educators in Singapore who have made a positive impact on their students. A total of six primary school teachers, five secondary school teachers and two special education teachers received the award at the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan Cultural Academy.

Education Minister Chan Chun Sing commended educators for helping Singapore’s education system function seamlessly over the past 20 months

One recipient was Ms Germain Kang Yin Ga, a biology and science teacher who has taught at Yuhua Secondary School for 10 years. Always on call, she is always just a WhatsApp or Instagram message away if a student needed help.

Ms Germain Kang is also very adept at the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in class, for example, employing digital tools such as online quizzes. These skills came in handy last year with the advent of home based and online learning.

02 September 2021

When Yale-NUS College was established more than a decade ago, many faculty and students criticised the plan, citing concerns that Singapore would not be able to foster a good liberal arts education.

The criticisms died down as the college took in its pioneer batch of students in 2013, but rumblings over academic freedom surfaced again two years ago, when a module titled Dissent And Resistance was cancelled by the college.

Then Education Minister Ong Ye Kung said: “Academic freedom cannot be carte blanche for anyone to misuse an academic institution for political advocacy, for this would undermine the institution’s academic standards and public standing.”

Now, Yale-NUS college has stopped taking in new students as part of the National University of Singapore’s larger plan to merge it with its University Scholars Programme.

The onus is now on NUS to ensure that the best elements of the liberal arts education built over the last 10 years by Yale-NUS are not lost.

29 August 2021

Researchers from the Singapore University of the Social Sciences (SUSS) will be conducting a five-year study into how Singaporeans use their time.

The study will take a random sample of 1,000 Singaporean households, defined as those living under one roof, taking into account a variety of family structures.

SUSS will seek to understand how Singaporeans’ routines and rituals have changed. The study will do this by looking at how much time Singaporeans spend at home, the workplace or school.

SUSS president Cheong Hee Kiat said the research will be able to contribute to good policy decisions by helping policymakers understand what is happening on the ground. The principal investigator of the study is psychologist Leong Chan-Hoong, an associate professor at the SUSS Centre for Applied Research.