NUS School of Computing students and ex-students have been on news for all the wrong reasons nowadays.

Some time ago, we had a Porsche-driving rich kid with IQ of 160 who used his intelligence to steal credit card information and stole about $30,000 or more.

Today, there was a news about an ex-student, now boss of a $1.6 million Internet technology firm who was fined for punching another student last year.

Hmmm, are this the sort of graduates we are producing? What can be done to improve the characters of our students?

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The fact that a foreign student on an MOE scholarship has managed to get $1.6 million funding for his start-up kinda unnerves me. OK, I admit he must be pretty good to be able to get such amounts of funding. However, I do feel that sometimes Singapore should have some schemes reserved for just Singaporeans.

Look at what we have now. Tuition fee subsidies, scholarships, bursaries. All these are nearly equally available to foreign students as they are to locals. However, our parents are the ones who paid taxes. Our parents are the ones who contributed to our economy. For the guys, we are the ones who have served NS and continue to be obliged to defending the country in times of need.

So why then, are foreign students getting nearly the same privileges as us? Sometimes, it can even be perceived that they have it better than us! For example, they only pay a few hundred dollars more in tuition fees a year compared to locals. True, they do have a 3 year bond to work in Singapore later. But this is all the better for them, as most of them come from poorer countries and won’t mind working in Singapore for our pay – at local students’ expense. Many of them would probably go back to their countries as well-to-do people 3 years later, laughing at how the Singapore government helped them with subsidised education and high paying jobs (compared with their home countries) after graduation.
The government cites reasons such as ‘boosting competitiveness’. However, it does not mean that Singaporeans should lose their privileges as natives of the country or have to share it with foreigners who never contributed to our nation-building.

It’s not only about education. In terms of healthcare, foreigners also enjoy the same or almost the same levels of subsidies that we do. Why isn’t the Government doing more to protect the interests of native Singaporeans?

I am sure a lot of people feel the way I do, judging by the increasing number of younger people who are leaving Singapore for good, going somewhere else where they will feel more valued, even as 2nd class citizens or immigrants.

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