NUS going all out to make PRC scholars feel welcome
March 6th, 2012 |
Author:
Editorial
On top of an estimated $174,000 spent on a PRC scholar to study in a 4-year degree course (
http://www.tremeritus.com/2012/02/1...-for-foreign-student-given-by-moe-understated), NUS also offers “mentorship”, family hosting and outing activities to them, going all out to make them feel at home.
This was revealed by the following email notice sent to NUS students, inviting them to ‘be-friend’ 17-year-old PRC scholars and to serve as mentors to them for 1 or 2 semesters:
Click to enlarge
The notice requires NUS students wanting to serve as mentors to be “person with honesty, integrity, respect, support and unfailing drive”.
The mentor is required to attend a 1-week compulsory training in NUS, conducted by medical doctors, psychologists, counselors and NUS higher management staff so as to be “equipped” with “essential knowledge and skill” to take up the post in mentoring the PRC scholars.
In exchange for mentoring 6 PRC scholars, the selected mentor is offered a single room in the hostel without the need to pay any hostel and meal fees. They are fully paid for by NUS. Besides getting free lodging and meal, the mentor will also be “awarded” a certificate at end of the mentorship, which he or she can use for job applications later.
Also, all the family hosting and outing activities for the PRC scholars will be financially supported by NUS too. It appears that not only the PRC scholars’ study and living expenses are sponsored, even their entertainment expenses (e.g. outing activities to the zoo, bird park, Universal Studio at Sentosa etc) are separately covered. It certainly pays to be a PRC scholar.
It is not known why PRC students are specially treated since there are also other international students and scholars in NUS. It is not known if students and scholars of other nationalities get such special privileged treatments too.
Despite the generous showers of care and attentions given to foreign scholars, the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Education Ms Sim Ann revealed in Parliament recently that the majority (55%) of them cannot get a second-upper class honours or better when they graduate. In other words, most of the foreign scholars are only of average calibre. It then begs the question why we are showering money at these people in the first place? Why not spend this money on our own Singaporean students instead?
There is also anecdotal evidence indicating that more foreign scholars are defaulting (i.e, breaking their bonds) in the last 2 years, as related by PRC students in this article on a Chinese site:
http://www.chinanews.com/lxsh/2012/01-10/3593069.shtml.
The reason being since 2010, in response to Singaporeans’ demands and the approaching of a general election, the government withdrew the automatic granting of PR to foreign scholars after their graduations from our local universities. Without PR, their employability diminishes. Many couldn’t find a job in Singapore and promptly skipped town to return home. Others have returned home because they find the job prospects better, especially with their ability to speak better English than their peers at home.
And finally, we have PRC scholars like Sun Xu, who after receiving generous treatments from Singapore taxpayers, wrote on a blog to condemn Singaporeans: “There are more dogs than humans in Singapore”.
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