Beyond Degrees
The Making of the National University of Singapore

By Edwin Lee & Tan Tai Yong
1996
Singapore University Press
ISBN: 9971-69-203-1 (hardcover)
ISBN: 9971-69-202-3 (paper)
240 pages
$95.50 hardcover; $68.50 paper

OUT OF PRINT

---

Community, Government, Academia: the interactions between them account for the beginnings, struggles, and ultimately, progress of higher education in English in Singapore in the colonial era. They also provoked the rise of a separate university, teaching in the Chinese medium, unprecedented under British rule.

The National University of Singapre (NUS) inaugurated in 1980, is the proud legatee of this history and heritage which goes back to 1905. To arrive at this point, the University did not work alone. Once colonialism was over and Singapore independent, the Government itself stepped in to take the lead, convinced that the University had a vital role to play in national development, and also of the need to address the rift and unevenness in tertiary education by pushing for reform and merger.

The NUS strives to excel and become truly world class in academic standing. It forges ahead secure in the knowledge that it has contributed to, and grown up with, the young Singapore nation, and has been of service to its fellow citizens and people to whom it owes so much of its strength and resources. For the NUS, international recognition is but an extension from an indespensible foundation within: the unity and mutual support between academia, community and nation.

Asian Studies

Return to Coronet Books main page