Tension between local and foreign faculty in the social sciences over teaching, research, publications and promotions has been simmering for some time. What's at stake for the universities and the country?
By Charissa Yong And Andrea Ong, The Straits Times, 5 Apr 2014
POLITICAL science graduate Wee Shi Chen, 27, recalls being taught by a non-Singaporean whose accent was so thick the students only realised after several weeks that the lecturer's points on Mauritius had actually been on Malaysia.
The 2013 figures for the National University of Singapore's (NUS's) political science department, from which Mr Wee graduated, throw up this startling fact: 18 of its 25 faculty are foreign.
Only seven, or 28 per cent, are Singaporean.
One Member of Parliament found this so worrying he raised the issue during the recent Budget debate. Marine Parade GRC MP Seah Kian Peng highlighted the fact that fewer than half of the faculty in political science, communications and public policy - which he described as "some of the most important and context-sensitive fields of endeavour in any country" - are Singaporean.
In doing so, he shone a spotlight on a longstanding source of unhappiness among local academics. The high number of foreign colleagues has been such a sore point for some that they have aired their grievances to ministers, several said in interviews.
Last year, a small group of local academics had closed-door meetings with Law and Foreign Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam, Senior Minister of State for Education and Law Indranee Rajah and civil servants from the Education and Manpower ministries, sources said.
Ms Indranee had said in Parliament last May that she has heard the call, and that the Education Ministry (MOE) strongly supports and encourages such universities to get more Singaporeans on board for all their tracks.
But the universities have a large degree of autonomy in the way they recruit and in the way they structure, she added.
This was in reply to Nominated MP Eugene Tan, an associate professor of law at the Singapore Management University (SMU), who has raised the issue six times in Parliament since 2012.
He says: "The disproportionate presence and importance of foreign faculty members is a cause for concern."
Associate Professor Alan Chong from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies agrees. Prof Chong, who used to teach at NUS' political science department, says: "My impression is that many of the foreign faculty are here for the higher salaries and expatriate perks, relative to those in North America and Europe. They have no abiding interest in helping Singapore establish itself as a long-term hub for good social science research."
Besides the NUS political science department, locals are also the minority at the university's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (38 out of 82 faculty) and at NTU's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (12 out of 29 faculty). And at NTU's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information (WKWSCI), 21 of the 48 faculty are Singaporean.
That raises the question of whether the current ratio of local to foreign faculty is worrisome in its impact on teaching and research in what Mr Seah has described as "context-sensitive" fields, within the local public universities.
Loss of local knowledge
Loss of local knowledge
BEING Singaporean does not automatically make one an expert on a Singapore subject matter, acknowledges SMU's Prof Tan.
But all things being equal, "there is no doubting that a Singaporean faculty is likely to bring to the table intimate local knowledge and a deeper empathy with Singaporean values and society, having lived in Singapore for an extended period. There will also be sensitivity to local nuances", he adds.
Professor Chan Heng Chee, one of the first political science graduates from NUS and the first Singaporean to join the department staff, says: "When Singaporeans work on Singapore, they bring a special perspective, growing up and living in the society and being part of the society."
"Understanding the culture makes an important difference in shaping a point of view," adds the chair of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities.
For modules in which students learn how Singapore ticks, such as in economics or politics, "it's important to ensure that we have enough Singaporeans teaching that", says NTU economics head Euston Quah.
Over at NTU's school of communication studies, one senior faculty member is concerned that a module called "Singapore and the Media", which gives a survey of the local media landscape, including, among other things, its historical development and regulations, has been "phased out".
But perhaps the most distressing aspect of this debate over local versus foreign scholars is the insidious suspicion that foreign faculty who have been appointed to leadership positions are hiring and promoting those like them.
Prof Tan says: "Academics have their own networks and sometimes, these may come into play during the hiring process. You will hear often enough complaints of foreign faculty preferring their own kind."
Some Singaporean dons have been so unhappy they requested a meeting with the Manpower Ministry a few months ago to discuss what they perceive as discriminatory hiring.
However, others say that hiring is a "stringent exercise" based on merit. NUS sociologist Paulin Straughan says her department holds open calls, involving the entire department, with the underlying principle of "getting the best talent available for the position that you have".
No longer a draw
PROF Chan, who is also Ambassador-at-large, cites another reason for the dearth of local dons - few Singaporeans want to go into academia because the time they would need to invest in graduate studies is long.
"There are many other attractive job options out there in the market. Bright young people want a piece of the action immediately," she says.
Earning a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) takes four to five years on average, says Prof Quah, and "unless you do the appropriate PhD in high demand, then the scope of finding suitable jobs after getting a PhD is even narrower for you".
NUS economist Shandre Thangavelu says the issue is not that Singaporeans are not interested in academia, but that the incentive mechanism has become "misplaced" over the years.
There used to be greater mentoring and nurturing of local talents, such as through the senior tutorship scheme which has resulted in the many Singaporeans in top university management posts today. But that scheme has since been scrapped, says Prof Shandre.
There is also less support and incentives - like professorships and chairs - for those who wish to pursue Singapore-based research, with many of these positions going to visiting foreign faculty, he says.
That exacerbates the problem posed by Singapore's size, says NUS political scientist Reuben Wong, who points out that Hong Kong's foreign dons outnumber its local ones too.
"There will always be more foreigners because one city alone will not produce enough people to form the majority of academics in university. Not even New York or London. Certainly not Singapore, which has an even smaller population than these global cities."
So foreign academics are necessary and will always be part of an academic establishment in the best universities, says Prof Chan.
"The question is the proportion. I think universities should try harder to attract more Singaporeans into academia and hire qualified suitable Singaporeans to rebalance the numbers," she adds.
Alarm bells
THE need for a strong Singaporean core is made more compelling as foreign academics tend not to sink roots in Singapore.
Their higher turnover rate makes it harder to build a critical mass of Singapore academic expertise, Prof Tan says.
Singapore is "on the cusp of a hollowing out" of local academics if the current trend is not reversed, he warns, pointing to numbers which may mean even fewer local dons in the future.
Currently, one in two tenured faculty members across the board is Singaporean. But a significant number of them will be reaching retirement age in the next 10 years, he says. "They are unlikely to be replaced in equal numbers given that, at the tenure-track rank, Singaporean faculty are woefully under-represented."
About one in four faculty members on track for tenure at NUS and NTU is Singaporean. At SMU, the figure is about one in six, according to an Education Ministry reply to a parliamentary question last March.
At a more junior level, since 2008, about six in 10 students who took up master's or PhD studies at Singapore's four autonomous universities have been international students, the ministry said in reply to a separate question last November.
Students weigh in
TO STUDENTS, what matters is not the nationalities of their professors but the work they do.
"When we choose our thesis supervisors, we do not care where the professor is from. All we want is someone who knows about the topic," says NUS history graduate Han Ming Guang, 28.
Many, including Mr Wee, welcome the expertise and diversity of their international lecturers.
Now a pharmaceutical analyst, Mr Wee recalls how he and his classmates had been excited when a "big-name professor from the United States" joined the faculty.
"Previously, we had only read his works. He's a landmark figure. But in the next semester, he was standing in front of me talking. It was great for my academic growth," says Mr Wee.
His former coursemate Clement Ho, 26, now an analyst, says: "The way I see it, I could be trained by professors from America without having to be there."
Foreign lecturers are also not necessarily out of touch with Singapore, says final-year NUS history major Lai Jun Wei, 25.
"We have lecturers who have been in Singapore for over 15 years, and one has even been in Singapore longer than the female students have been - they weren't even born when he came to NUS," he adds.
Furthermore, top university programmes aim to challenge students with a variety of perspectives, says WKWSCI senior lecturer Mark Cenite.
"We aim to not only educate our students about local context but also to shake students out of their comfort zone, expose them to international perspectives, and ask them hard questions about what approaches are optimal for Singapore," he adds.
Prof Chan offers the nuanced view that the universities need to be open to learning. Some foreign academics can achieve a deep understanding of the local culture and perspective, especially after spending many years here, and sometimes an outsider "can raise some very important issues in our development that we have not thought of, and offer policy solutions".
"Academics who do shoddy work and poor analyses whether Singaporean or foreign have no place in a good university."
Deep nationalism
ULTIMATELY, what should matter most to students, faculty and the wider public is not the number of foreign versus local dons but the quality of teaching, research and scholarship relevant to Singapore.
Professor Straughan says: "I think what is important is for us to ensure that appraisal systems recognise the significance of local research. Because only then will you be able to encourage the brightest researchers, whether they are foreigners or locals, to spend time on local research."
Along similar lines, NUS sociologist Daniel Goh says that focusing on the percentage of Singaporeans in the faculty is "superficial nationalism".
He also cautions against an outcome where the state interferes with the running of the universities by dictating "who to hire, how to teach, what to research".
He points out: "Our universities have the mission to become world universities so as to keep Singapore bright and strong. That is deep nationalism."
All academics and MPs firmly reject any talk of affirmative action, such as a minimum quota of locals or ring-fencing certain subjects for locals to teach.
Besides broadening criteria to recognise academics' contributions to local research, they suggest mentorship and development programmes as ways to nurture more homegrown talent.
Says Prof Chan: "We have to interest students in academic life and mentor them. Students want role models. Professors can inspire students to join academia."
NUS offers overseas graduate and postgraduate scholarships for Singaporeans and PRs, said Ms Indranee in Parliament last year.
SMU has a faculty development scheme which sponsors overseas PhDs for Singaporean graduates keen on academic careers. After completing their degree, they will be considered for appointment to an assistant professorship at SMU, noted Ms Indranee.
Still, Prof Tan says the Education Ministry should keep an eye on hiring practices and remuneration and not let the principle of autonomy become a cloak for discrimination against locals.
"Our universities, ultimately, are Singaporean institutions, and they must have a Singaporean heartbeat," he says.
SINGAPOREAN INPUT NEEDED
"(Political Science) is a subject I thought needed more locals - people who have been through it here, who can understand all the nuances, who have gone through the experiences themselves.
It goes back to what we want our Singapore to be. What we want our political system to be like, what we want our values to be, must be defined by locals, not non-Singaporean academics."
- Marine Parade GRC MP Seah Kian Peng
A MATTER OF REBALANCING
"Foreign academics are always part of an academic establishment in the best universities. The question is the proportion. I think universities should try harder to attract more Singaporeans into academia and hire qualified, suitable Singaporeans to rebalance the numbers."
- Professor Chan Heng Chee, chair of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities
LOCALS LACK SUPPORT OR RECOGNITION
"My impression is that many of the foreign faculty are here for the higher salaries and expatriate perks, relative to those in North America and Europe. They have no abiding interest in helping Singapore establish itself as a long-term hub for good social science research.
At some point, they will say they want to relaunch their careers elsewhere and they will pack their bags. Singaporeans will always want to form your core faculty, but they are not getting the support or the recognition."
- Associate Professor Alan Chong from the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
SELECTIVE HIRING PROCESS
"Academics have their own networks and, sometimes, these may come into play during the hiring process. You will hear often enough complaints of foreign faculty preferring their own kind."
- Nominated MP and SMU Associate Professor of Law Eugene Tan
INSUFFICIENT LOCAL SUPPLY
"There will always be more foreigners because one city alone will not produce enough people to form the majority of academics in university. Not even New York or London. Certainly not Singapore, which has an even smaller population than these global cities."
- NUS political scientist Reuben Wong
SUPERFICIAL VERSUS DEEP NATIONALISM
"Our universities have the mission to become world universities so as to keep Singapore bright and strong. That is deep nationalism. Focusing on the percentage of Singaporeans in the faculty is superficial nationalism."
- NUS sociologist Daniel Goh
Room for Singaporean schools of thought
By Andrea Ong, The Straits Times, 5 Apr 2014
By Andrea Ong, The Straits Times, 5 Apr 2014
IN Singapore universities' accelerated race to join the ranks of the world's best, a silent casualty may have been the local academic who devotes his career to studying the country and region through a uniquely Singapore lens.
That is the view of several scholars who traced the current controversy over foreign faculty members to the late 1990s, when Singapore launched its bid to play among the big boys of academia.
In 1996, then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong challenged the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University to build "the Boston of the East" and be dubbed the "Harvard and MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) of Asia".
The two universities could achieve this by drawing in "the best and brightest" from Asia and around the world, he said.
That ushered in an era of universities vying to raise their standing in world rankings such as those by Times Higher Education and QS, says Associate Professor Alan Chong of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
"While it is praiseworthy that Singapore wants to benchmark its universities globally, it cannot be done with the intensity of a pneumatic drill, without a sense of nuance and moderation," he says.
"You must also bear in mind that you need a vision that makes Singapore unique rather than a clone of certain Western universities."
Nominated MP Eugene Tan shares his discomfort, warning that the pressure to produce tangible outcomes quickly may have led universities to seek easy "off-the-shelf solutions" by importing foreign faculty instead of nurturing home-grown talent.
As far back as 2002, veteran backbencher MP and then Feedback Unit chief Wang Kai Yuen warned that local faculty members were unhappy about the "Americanisation" of the universities and the push for them to not just teach but also do research and get published in international journals.
In an interview with The Straits Times in that year, then NUS president Shih Choon Fong said the university had to reinvent itself rapidly to sustain Singapore's position as a First World economy. "NUS, like Singapore, has only a narrow timeframe of about 10 years to build its comparative advantage and niche," he said.
Professor Shih said the issue was not about Americanisation but "about globalisation versus parochialism - removing the walls and competing with the rest of the world". He added: "And one of the walls a university aiming for world-class status has to remove is with regard to talent. Mediocrity is not an option."
Professor Chan Heng Chee, chair of the Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities and a former NUS political science faculty member, says the universities also had to expand quickly to meet society's strong demand for a university education. Thus they had to hire foreign academics to augment their staff, she says.
The shake-up of the local universities was also an inevitable effect of the world rankings, which look at factors such as international outlook and how often other academics cite a faculty's research.
Such factors shape a university's approach to research. For instance, some like NMP Professor Tan have highlighted the diminished incentive for academics to research on Singapore as such work is less likely to be published or cited in top-tier journals due to a perception that Singapore is too small to be relevant to the rest of the world.
An academic can also feel pressure to be "unfairly critical" in analysing Singapore to increase the odds of getting published in these journals, he says, adding: "Put bluntly, bashing Singapore pays."
Prof Chan says that to counter these biases, she has long advocated that universities here consider a broader band of publications when they assess faculty in the humanities and social sciences, a point which has the backing of many of the academics interviewed.
But the drive to be world-class has also had other far-reaching repercussions.
In the social sciences, Prof Chong points to a marked preference by foreign faculty members for North American schools of thought. For instance, the quantitative approach to international relations that is popular in the US is favoured over approaches that study the impact of belief and cultural systems, even though the latter may be more relevant to understanding the Asian context, he says.
Associate Professor Shandre Thangavelu from NUS economics notes that the recent focus on Western economic thought and publications has also led to an increase in faculty members in these areas. There is greater interest in China and India than in Singapore and Asean, he says, in spite of the "very important economic and social issues to address" here.
But the implicit bias towards the West - which some academics describe as a "recolonisation" or "colonial hangover" - also means that Singaporeans who study their own nation and region are sometimes seen as academically inferior because they attend conferences or get published in journals outside North America and Europe.
That also affects their chances of promotion and tenure, say four faculty members who spoke to The Straits Times but declined to be named. The situation is so bad that some among them have packed their bags for other institutions or other countries.
On top of that, they also highlight other barriers that stand in the way of scholars who want to do research on Singapore, such as a lack of data and a political climate which has seen ministries reprimand academics when they disagree with their publications.
However, not all local faculty members take such a negative view of how universities here have developed in the last two decades, and it is significant that some younger dons in the social sciences say they are able to do research on Singapore, get published in brand-name journals and move up within the current system.
Some say it is not true that Singapore research will not get published. Associate Professor Paulin Straughan, a sociologist at NUS, says cross-cultural comparison is one way of gaining a competitive edge while adding depth to research on Singapore.
Speaking to an international arena remains important because of the reach it gives a scholar, she adds. "As an academic, you need to arrive at a place where the minute somebody invokes your name, others will pay attention. Otherwise your work will just be lost in a library somewhere and nobody cares."
Associate Professor Daniel Goh from NUS sociology says he learnt to resolve the initial problems he faced and has since published his research on Singapore in top international journals.
The solution is to find the larger significance of the local case, whether as an avenue to better understand a theoretical problem that interests scholars elsewhere or a puzzle that challenges a common understanding, he says.
Social scientists also have methodological tools and innovations to circumvent problems such as the political climate and lack of data, he says. "There is no excuse here."
Prof Goh and Associate Professor Reuben Wong from NUS political science are optimistic that there is a place in the sun for Singapore-oriented research, regardless of the researcher's nationality.
Prof Wong points out that in international relations, universities outside of North America have managed to differentiate themselves and become leading centres in their own right. There is an "English school", a "Copenhagen school" and even a nascent "Chinese school", he says.
For Singapore universities to grow as thought leaders and centres of excellence, the key is to develop their own niche, he adds.
This niche may not always reflect the Government's preferences and should set itself apart from the existing "Singapore development and governance school of thought", which is closely associated with the policies and political pragmatism of Singapore's first generation of leaders, he says.
"If Singapore wants to attract top-notch graduate students in the social sciences and public policy, then there must be a strong core of Singapore-based scholars who have distinctive positions and a school of thought that contributes an original voice to global research," says Prof Wong.
Prof Goh believes there is scope for "Singapore approaches" - plural - to the social sciences. He is one of several scholars who stressed the importance of diverse views and methodologies as part of a university's ethos of a shared humanity.
Noting that there are many mixed-nationality research groups in his faculty trying to develop "Singapore schools" in their own fields, he says: "We need to not do parochial and nativist research focused only on Singapore, but to always connect Singapore to the universe of the phenomenon in question."
Diversity of ideas is the issue
WE ARE missing what really matters in the debate on foreigners teaching in Singapore's universities ("Wanted: Local talent in varsities"; April 5).
In the United States, young people grow up in different states, or even different parts of a state, and have very different experiences. There is an abundance of diversity as students and staff at American universities come from all over the country.
In contrast, most Singaporean students go through the same education system and have similar life experiences growing up on a tiny island.
This poses a challenge to universities here, which should aim to have a continual influx of diverse perspectives and ideas to challenge the minds of students.
This is where the teaching staff come in. They should offer different perspectives to help undergraduates exercise their thinking and broaden their horizons.
This does not mean the teaching staff have to be foreigners. Many Singaporeans have studied, worked or lived in other countries for years and can offer the same diversity - but attracting them to join universities as teaching staff is a challenge in itself.
Chen Junyi
ST Forum, 19 Apr 2014
ST Forum, 19 Apr 2014
No perfect solutions to talent shortage
THE argument for employing more Singaporeans to rebalance the under-representation of local academics in our universities is compelling ("Wanted: Local talent in varsities"; last Saturday).
However, realistically, not much can be done. It is not an issue of policy failure, or lack of will or money.
The harsh reality is that Singapore simply lacks professionals across all sectors.
Even if we raise salaries or give priority to Singaporeans when hiring, it is unlikely to attract a large number of locals to tip the balance.
Even if we could, it would come at the expense of losing administrators, lawyers, engineers, bankers and other professionals in other sectors - creating vacancies that have to be filled by foreigners. It is a game of musical chairs in the end.
When our economy expands and upgrades, more professionals would be needed. Hence, we have to expand our universities.
The gap between the supply of local talent and the rising demand for academics will only widen over time.
I agree with Nominated MP Eugene Tan that our universities must have a "Singaporean heartbeat", especially in the social sciences. But let us not over-generalise or over-emphasise it, as it may not be that imperative in technical faculties.
It is more important that more local academics come forward to have their "Singaporean heartbeats" heard, to counter the dearth in numbers.
Also, we need to work harder to win the hearts of foreigners and convince them to become citizens. If more of them become us, this local-foreigner imbalance issue would vanish.
We must keep on taking practical steps to bolster the "Singaporean heartbeat" wherever possible. But let us be realistic that there are no complete or perfect solutions to our colossal national problem of talent shortage.
Ng Ya Ken
ST Forum, 12 Apr 2014
ST Forum, 12 Apr 2014
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