College of Everything

27 August 2021

What!? School of Design and Environment (SDE) will merge with Faculty of Engineering (FoE) to form the College of Design and Engineering (CDE) !?!??

might as well merge every schools into “College of Everything” (COE). 💡 fully flexible & inter-disciplinary. 🙄 everyone will just end up as jack of all trades but master of none...

the closure of Yale-NUS is a sad day for academic freedom in Singapore. the process of announcing the closure was also quite abrupt and handled quite poorly (tbh nothing new, as i’m quite numbed to NUS lousy admin).

the sudden closure without doubt raise questions and speculations. it is definitely not fair for current/incoming students, especially newly enrolled students who started their academic year a few weeks earlier, and NSF boys who rejected offers from other schools hoping to join Yale-NUS after they ORD. will these current/incoming students be given an option to transfer to the new liberal arts college or other programmes offered by NUS? will the quality of teaching drop as faculty might jump off the sinking ship? it is kind of sad for the current students to continue studying in a school that will close upon their graduation. cant imagine the morale and angst of these students and alumus now.

the closure of Yale-NUS also makes me a little worried for ADM, which is also quite liberal in critical thinking and the culture/curriculum are not in line with the standard STEM disciplines offered by NTU, making it quite similar to Yale-NUS.

ADM is a pretty safe haven for artistic expression (at least that was how i felt during my time). we are a small community (each cohort of about 150pax) with very small class size (average 20pax, with some studio having less than 10pax). ADM enhanced my critical thinking, which is an important transferrable soft skills applicable to any job scope. students are free to critique, question and express our views through our artistic creations. therefore, many of our projects can be quite controversial and do not conform to contemporary social norms or national narratives. our works allow our voice to be heard and can help raise awareness for a silent/taboo topic. at least, during my time in ADM, i’m not forced to write a disclaimer line to ascertain my project is not political (something i’m forced to comply while writing my MUP Dissertation).

kind of ironic that the supposed closure of Yale-NUS is billed as a mearger to form a new liberal arts college (whats USP btw), when the decision-making process is so opaque and the academic direction of the university has been rather conservative. i can totally imagine some old/obsolete stubborn part-time profs insisting students of the new liberal arts college to write disclaimers in their reports in the name of protecting their ass.

sometimes i really wonder how does NUS fare so well in those university rankings when its quality of some faculty, teaching style/methodology and admin can be dubious at time. maybe perhaps i'm reading the ranking of college sexual scandals.

Response to "Two new colleges at NUS to deliver flexible, interdisciplinary education more accessibly, and at greater scale" by NUS News (original article at https://news.nus.edu.sg/two-new-colleges-at-nus-to-deliver-flexible-interdisciplinary-education-more-accessibly-and-at-greater-scale/?fbclid=IwAR0w2PdEf7Nl2TtQZViLpFy_0BBbxgXd25MSv3AV9BgqXd2sH11yFBgAaaM).

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