Singapore now the real deal for Asian students

World’s leading educational institutions are setting up campuses in the city-state

SINGAPORE: Asian students who traditionally looked to English-speaking Western countries for education are increasingly turning closer to home — to Singapore, educators say.

Backed by a government-led initiative to capture a slice of the great paper chase in Asia, Singapore has managed to woo more than 16 of the world's leading schools to set up campuses as part of the city-state's "Global Schoolhouse" ambition.

Singapore's education blueprint aims to attract 150,000 foreign students by 2015 in an industry that has mainly been the turf of American and British institutions.

There are currently 80,000 foreign students in Singapore, up from 50,000 in 2001, mostly from Malaysia, Vietnam, China, India and South Korea, government figures show.

The country's two main universities — National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University — are already held in high esteem by their regional peers but getting the world's elite schools to run courses here has further raised the city-state's academic standing, educators say.

"The splashy news coverage of several prominent foreign institutions entering Singapore has created visibility and awareness of Singapore as an alternative location for education, to the more traditional locations of the UK or US," said Narayan Pant, dean of education at INSEAD. "Singapore has become a credible alternative to those well-known locations, especially for people in the region," he said.

Christopher Ziguras, associate professor of international studies at Australia's Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, said Singapore's well-defined goal of catering to global demand for higher education has paid off.