Singaporean Graduates With Harvard PhD After Getting Rejected By Local Universities
He said in his speech at Harvard that his school in Singapore discouraged him from studying biology due to poor grades, despite his interest
Singapore used to have this really flawed educational policy of allowing only 25-30% of each cohort into public universities. This policy was in place until the 2010s from what I recall.
The explanations given ranged from 'if everyone went to university, a degree would be useless' to 'our economy does not need so many university graduates'.
The government has changed course in the 2010s and now a much larger percentage of each cohort goes to university.
This has handicapped many Singaporeans of the older generations. This shortsighted policy also ignored the fact that Singapore was already a knowledge based economy back then and it was easy to see that high value services jobs would dominate the economy.
A bachelors degree just confers broad general knowledge in a particular area. Education is about learning knowledge and skills for life and to practise a profession. Everyone who is motivated deserves a chance to gain knowledge he or she is interested in. This is also in the interests of the country.
