Last Saturday, when I read about President Tan Eng Chye’s explanation that it is about the money, I paused for thought. He said YNC only managed to raise $80m of its intended target $300m in endowed donations “to build a sustainable overall endowment of $1 billion.”
Well, if money is the issue, then maybe there is some just cause for closure?
But this morning, it is the alumni strikes back when three former YNC grads (Tee Zhuo, Melody Madhavan and Ng Yi Ming) wrote a rebuttal to President Tan’s Saturday’s article. And I un-paused, and wonder, will the real slim shady please stand up?
Here is why, and there is more than meets the eye when it comes to money.
The alumni trio cited former Yale president Richard Levin, who said this: “If people are saying that finances were the issue, they’re simply incorrect.”
President Levin added that the gap could be easily closed if enough run way was given. Mind you, East Coast plan was not built in a day right? What’s more, president Tan has left out one detail: that $300m fund-raising target was set for the year 2030.
So, YNC has about ten more years to go to hit the target. According to the article, $20m a year for the next ten years is not exactly a herculean task. It is definitely not a crisis of unsustainability, as President Tan puts it.
“To put things in perspective, top liberal arts colleges in the United States that have at least US$1 billion (S$1.34 billion) in endowment, such as Williams College or Amherst College, are over 200 years old. Yale-NUS was expected to achieve the same total endowment in a tenth of the time.”
Make sense? So, will the real Slim Shady pls stand up?
FYI, that reference is directed at a rap made popular due to the need to smoke out the real Eminem amongst the many fakes. Likewise, will the real reason for the YNC closure pls fess up?
Because this has been going on for long enough, and whether one is gobsmacked or flabbergasted, it is fast mutating into a situation where this Latin phrase seems most apt: “suppressio veri suggestio falsi" - that is, suppression of the truth is the suggestion of the lie or lies.
I know this is none of my business. I graduated decades ago. I do not come from such prestigious higher education. But, this contest for truth at our higher educational institution (that is supposed to be accorded the highest moral standing) is disconcerting. Lives are affected. Hopes dashed. Our young wants an account. Don’t they deserve it?
There’s in fact more than that money issue mentioned in the article. If you read it, the whole of it, you will note that the new college that replaces YNC is off to a less-than-inspiring start. There is no scaling up to an inclusive interdisciplinary liberal arts education as promised, because the batch intake is very much still the same. Maybe time will tell? There is even a risk of conflation between liberal arts and interdisciplinary education, because the two are rather distinct concepts.
And there is also the issue of autonomy. This is how the alumni trio explain it.
“But far from autonomy, the New College will not have a dedicated faculty or its own majors. Instead, students will, like other NUS students, choose their major or specialisation from existing schools and faculties within NUS.”
“The intense and close-knit interaction between students and faculty inside and outside the classroom, so integral to the success of liberal arts colleges, will also be lost.”
For more details, you will have to read the article. But my point, after all said, is to invite you to reassess that assurance given by our then education minister Ong Ye Kung in parliament: “a liberal arts school will have a place in Singapore’s education landscape.”
The question to be asked is, what kind of liberal arts school are we hoping to set up? Liberal arts with socialist or Asian characteristics?
And, if this saga is anything to go by, it seems like the way it is managed is based on this underlying theme: when you can’t stand the heat in the kitchen, you don’t just get out, you shut it down, toss up some platitudes, and start another cooking school.
Alas, will the real slim shady pls stand up?
Ps: Let’s just hope for some clarity in the upcoming townhall meeting.
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