Singapore Wants Kids to Skip College: Good Luck With That
People walk past a sign for the Duke-NUS (National University of Singapore) Graduate Medical School in Singapore. Photographer: Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
Singaporean Carmen Kok regrets that she never made it to university. She’s not letting her daughter make the same mistake, even if she has to send her abroad to get a place.
“You can’t rise up in Singapore without a degree,” said Kok, 47, who plans to spend three times what she makes in a year as a hairdresser to send her daughter to college in South Korea. “She may be able to get a job if she doesn’t go to university, but she can get a higher salary if she goes.”