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HERE's YOUR CHANCE!!!
musings.per.sg/2012/01/1037
The National University of Singapore law school recently announced that it would be reviewing the admission criteria for students, primarily to allow for "greater diversity in the backgrounds, abilities and interests of its undergraduates", instead of having students drawn from a small number of schools. This has caused some discomfort, and led to questions of fairness as it appears to be a deviation from the principle of meritocracy.
Comments that the revised admission criteria will be substantially less meritocratic than the current system are for now, I suppose, somewhat speculative. However, even if substantially more discretion is built into the revised admission criteria, to admit students on bases other than just grades, a question worth pondering is whether it is desirable in the long term interests of certain professions and maybe even Singapore society and the economy, to have students from only certain schools form the majority of undergraduates in certain "highly desirable" professional courses (by Singapore standards), such as law, medicine and dentistry.
I have no figures to support what I am going to say. But just for the purposes of discussion, suppose -
(a) that 700 out of the top 1,000 "A" level students end up studying in two top institutions every year;
(b) that there are 3,000 applicants for 500 places in "highly desirable" professional courses every year;
(c) that out 700 top students studying in two top institutions at (a), 500 apply to study the "highly desirable" professional courses while the remaining 200 apply for other courses or study overseas;
(d) that out of the other 300 top students who did not choose to study in the two top institutions at (a), 100 apply to study the "highly desirable" professional courses while the remaining 200 apply for other courses or study overseas.
I suppose we will find that, year after year, the students from the two top institutions at (a) above forming the majority of undergraduates in the "highly desirable" professional courses, and very few of these top students in "less desirable" courses such as, maybe, engineering, the general sciences, business, mass communications, and the arts. Would there be a critical mass of top minds in engineering, the general sciences, business, mass communications, and the arts, to form the next generation of engineers, scientists, businessmen, journalists, writers, political scientists and teachers ?
Perhaps not. And for this reason (amongst a myriad of others), this revision in admission criteria for law school may not be such a bad thing.
Perhaps it should be extended to other "highly desirable" courses as well.