Commentary
By Aaron Ng
Managing Editor (Production)
Jan. 22, 2007

The government announced last month that in the future, international students would have to pay more fees than local students.

Does this mean an actual increase in the cost of education for all international undergraduate students in future? The answer is, probably not.

Only international students who are not under any scholarship and choose not to accept the tuition grant offered by the Ministry of Education will be affected by the change. International students will enjoy the same amount of tuition grant as local students as long as they are willing to work in Singapore for three years after graduation.

In fact, it is unlikely that future international students will be adversely affected. The current full fees payable for an international student who chooses not to take up the MOE tuition grant is about S$20,000 for a non-lab based course. At University of California, Berkeley, tuition fees cost about S$28,000 for international students.

If NUS increases its tuition fee for international students, there will be little difference in terms of fees between UC Berkeley, ranked 8th in the latest Times Higher Education Supplement World University rankings, and NUS, who is ranked 19th in the same rankings. It is only logical for a prospective international student intending to pay full fees to pick UC Berkeley rather than NUS.

Therefore, there should be few future international students who will be adversely affected by the upcoming fee increases, because there are better alternatives. International students enrolling in NUS in the future are most likely either to be scholarship recipients or recipients of the MOE tuition grant.

In essence, the government’s announcement has little implications in reality for international students, unless there is a corresponding decrease in scholarships as well as the amount of MOE tuition grant given to international students.

However, the announcement is an excellent political move. With more and more Singaporeans voicing concerns about competition from foreign talents, the government cannot ignore the issue without paying a political price.

By announcing a fee increase for international students and continuing to make scholarships and the MOE tuition grant available for international students, the government got the best of both worlds - a more pacified populace without sacrificing its foreign-talent policies.

Of course, the plan is not perfect. News of the impending increase is bound to travel quickly and prospective international students who are not well-informed might be turned off from coming to Singapore for an education.

The imperative task would be to allay unfounded fears of prospective international students. It is probably not an easy task but, compared to an increasingly unhappy populace over the government’s foreign-talent policy, it is perhaps the lesser evil.