SPEECH BY DR TONY TAN KENG YAM, MINISTER ... - NUS - Home

SPEECH BY DR TONY TAN KENG YAM, MINISTER OF EDUCATION
AND VICE-CHANCELLOR DESIGNATE, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF
SINGAPORE, AT THE WELCOME CONVENTION FOR NEW NUS
STUDENTS AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE ON WEDNESDAY,
2 JULY 1980 AT 7.00 PM
University Education and the NUS
This year 3119 students have enrolled to study in the National University of
Singapore. The largest number (671 students) have been chosen to read Arts/Social
Science. Engineering is a close second with 670 students. Then comes Science (613
students), Business Administration (332 students), Accountancy (302 students), Medicine
(170 students), Law (118 students), Architecture (106 students), Building/Estate
Management (99 students), and finally Dentistry (38 students).
(Figures reflect the position as at 1st July 1980. Enrolment of students will continue
until 19th July I980).
You the incoming students were chosen from a pool of 7612 applicants from 13
countries: Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, The Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, Hong Kong,
Sri Lanka, Egypt, Iran, Burma, India and the USA. In addition to fulfilling the prescribed
educational requirements, some of you would have undergone additional assessments
before being admitted to the Faculty of your choice. Medical students, for example, would
have gone through the Vocational Assessment Scheme as well as an interview; Dental
students would have been tested for their manual dexterity; Law students would have been
interviewed to find out their competency in English.
To get this far, you would have successfully cleared several educational hurdles -
PSLE, "0" Levels, "A" Levels. You would have come from a much larger cohort of Primary I
pupils (some 50,000 to 60,000 each year) who entered school 12 to 14 years ago. So you
will see that competition for places in the NUS is relatively fierce and you are among the
fortunate few who have managed to get onto the fast-speed escalator which hopefully will
carry you to further success in life.
In a special sense you will be a unique generation because you will be the first batch
of freshmen to enter the National University of Singapore. I am sure that you would have
followed closely the public debate over the last few months concerning the merger of
Nanyang University and the University of Singapore. You would not be here this evening if
the debate had not led to a workable solution accepted by NU and SU Councils, staff and
supporters of the two Universities, and the wider community. When the NUS students attend
their classes next Monday, a new era in the history of education in Singapore will have
begun.
What can you expect to gain from your stay in the University? How can you best
utilise the next four, five or six years so that you will derive the maximum benefit from your
university education.
These questions cannot be satisfactorily answered without considering a more
fundamental and philosophical conundrum which has puzzled the keenest minds over the
ages and for which there is no universally correct answer. Thoughtful men and women, from
Cardinal Newman to Eric Ashby, have repeatedly addressed themselves to the age-old
theological questions "What should be the aim of a university education?" but the answer still
eludes us.

Universities came into being in the Middle Ages to educate ministers — not Cabinet
ministers but ministers of Religion. Later on the training of lawyers and doctors was added.
Engineering was a late starter and, as a subject, did not gain academic respectability until
after the Second World War. In England and many other European countries, universities
were for a long time bastions of privilege and playgrounds for the upper classes. Their
function was to perpetrate the values and ideals of an established class of gentlemen so that
the status quo could be maintained. In Singapore this can hardly be the role envisaged for
the NUS.
It is a wishful academic myth to believe that students enter the University seeking to
be taught how to think critically and independently. This might possibly have happened at
Oxford and Cambridge at one time when undergraduates were drawn largely from the
children of the landed aristocracy but, I think that this is hardly true today when even
students who come from privileged homes have to worry about making a living after they
finish university. There are, of course, a few students who enter the University because they
want to enjoy themselves, some because they have been pressured into doing so by
ambitious parents or conscientious teachers but most students enter university to seek an
education which will enable them to get a good job, security and insurance for their old age.
All this is quite natural and a vice-chancellor who ignores this fact of life, will, I predict, meet
with disaster within a short time.
The question of what students should leave and what professors should teach cannot
be divorced from the larger question of the role of the University in the society which pays its
bills and from which it draws its students.
Singapore today is a young nation, very much in the growth and development phase.
Our economy has an insatiable demand for technological and professional manpower. For
the present I do not see any escape from the necessity to gear university education to the
demands of the market. Much as many may lament the decline of humanistic or liberal
education and the ascendancy of professional and technical studies, our priorities do not
permit any other course. Students want it, society needs it and the university should provide
it.
In some ways one can draw a parallel between our own situation and that of the
American universities in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, when there was general agreement
that the central role of the universities was to advance scientific and technological studies so
that America could triumph over its arch-enemy, Russia. There was little doubt or
introspection and the launching of the Russian space satellite Sputnik, merely confirmed the
correctness of such a course. Thus was the ground laid for the great surge in engineering
and technological research and the concentration on excellence in science and technology
which gave America its commanding lead over the rest of the world.
As has already happened in America, however, the time will come in Singapore when
the academic pendulum will swing the other way, when over-concentration on professional
studies will be regarded as an unnecessary limitation of the role of the University. Those of
you who have applied to study Arts and the Humanities may therefore take comfort. As our
society develops we will find that we need not only engineers, doctors or skilled
administrators but also writers, artists, and musicians who can enrich our cultural life.
While it is right for the NUS to concentrate on meeting the nation's immediate needs
for trained manpower, it would be unhealthy and furthermore, unnecessary to confine
university education entirely to the narrow field of vocational studies and to exclude totally all
liberal or humanistic aspects of learning.

In America and Europe, today, much thought is being given to restoring the balance
of general or liberal education vis-a-vis vocational or professional education in the university.
Much of the debate has centred around the concept or a “core curriculum” as mentioned by
the Prime Minister in his talk to the University staff at the end of May.
This concept has attached a great deal of attention both in the popular press and in
academic journals, reportedly much to the surprise of the Dean of the Harvard University
Faculty, Henry Rosovsky, who set the process in motion in February 1978 when he
circulated to the Harvard community copies of his 36-page typescript setting out a set of
guidelines for some changes in that part of the undergraduate programme concerned with
general education.
If you are not inclined to dig through thick volumes and learned journals, may I
recommend that you read two short but succinct articles in the latest issue of Dialogue
which, to my mind, summarises the essentials of the subject. One is a rather critical article
by Adele Simmons, President of Hampshire College. The other is by James Q. Wilson,
Professor of Government at Harvard and formerly Chairman of the University's Task Force
on the Core Curriculum. Understandably he takes a more optimistic view.
It is important that we should be clear about what the Core Curriculum is and what it
is not. As one critic puts it rather unkindly, it is neither a core nor a curriculum ie students are
not all required to take the same courses.
Before the introduction of the core curriculum, an undergraduate at Harvard had to
take 32 one-semester courses to earn enough credits to qualify for the bachelor's degree —
16 in his major field, eight free electives and eight general education electives to be chosen
from more than 800 courses distributed over three broad areas: humanities, natural sciences
and social sciences.
What Dean Rosovsky proposed was that the general education requirement should
be revised to require every undergraduate student to take at least one course in seven or
eight of the following areas: mathematics, natural science, literature, moral philosophy,
foreign cultures, social analysis, history, foreign languages and expository writing. In each of
these areas, students would select from a list of eight to ten approved courses, some
specially designed and others adapted from existing courses.
By and large academics are conservative and this revision although modest in scope,
was widely acclaimed simply because it was the first time that the staff of a major university
had addressed themselves seriously to a difficult problem of undergraduate education.
There are formidable obstacles even in this modest reform. Harvard academics have
spent hundreds of hours in innumerable committees but, as yet, there is no curriculum in
existence.
Some academics expressed honest skepticism concerning, for example, whether
real science could be taught to non-scientists or whether, in the short time allocated to the
subject, a student could gain sufficient mastery of a foreign language to make the effort
worthwhile. What has been achieved after two years of hard work is the passing of enabling
legislation accompanied by a set of guidelines. If all goes well, the scheme may come fully
into effect in 1983 and it may take another five years before the scheme can be fairly judged
a success or failure. As James Wilson puts it "I do not know whether the effort to revitalize
general (ie liberal arts) education will succeed. Harvard is, at best at the end of the
beginning, not the beginning of the end".
As I have mentioned the significance of the Harvard proposal lies not so much in the

proposals themselves but in the fact that, for the first time since the Second World War, a
serious attempt is being made to improve undergraduate education and in a field where
immediate practical or economic gains are not evident.
This is a swing away from the emphasis on research and graduate schools which
had been a hallmark of the modern American university. It is a return to the concept of the
mediaeval university which was established not to undertake research but to transmit values
and traditions from one generation to another.
Whatever be the eventual fate of Harvard's attempt to put new life into liberal
education, it will be worth our while to watch their efforts and perhaps learn from them at
some future date.
One aspect however, which we can consider introducing is the emphasis on
expository writing. Those of you who were not able to get P4 or better in your “A” level
General Paper have had to sit for the Qualifying English Test. If you fail you will be required
to take a remedial English course.
I was interested to learn from Alan Heimert, Head of Harvard's Department of
English, that Harvard requires all freshmen to do one-semester course in expository writing.
For those whose English is poor, the course teaches them to write grammatical,
understandable English. For those whose English is adequate, the course helps to realise
that they can write in an even better, crisper style and that the effort to transmit one's
thoughts in clear, unambiguous language requires constant application.
To conduct the course well requires considerable manpower resources as its
success depends on close and personal supervision, even down to individual tuition when
necessary. Teachers cannot be recruited overnight so all of you can breathe a sigh of relief.
This new burden will not be inflicted on those present today but I cannot promise the same
for future generations of students.
Finally, what advise can I give to you who are now entering University?
First, master your subject. Whether you are a historian, mathematician, engineer,
doctor, accountant, lawyer or architect, you should know your brief. It is of little benefit to
worry about general education if you cannot master one particular discipline. This is your
primary duty and at the risk of expounding the obvious, this is where you should be paying
most attention.
It is not through acquiring a smattering of knowledge in a number of unrelated fields
that you learn how to think clearly, logically and confidently. By all means, be an amateur in
a number of fields but aim to be a professional in at least one.
You would, however, miss much if this is all that you strive for in your university
education. Participate in student activities and if you plan your time-table carefully you will
find that this will not detract from your academic work. Rather it will enrich your
undergraduate life and through it you will be able to broaden your friendships to encompass
not only lecturers and fellow students from your own faculty but also others from unrelated
faculties or departments. In this way you will make progress towards getting a rounded
education.
In conclusion may I bid you welcome to the National University of Singapore. I hope
that we will see much of each other over the next few years and that all of you will get
through your examinations without mishap and with good honours.