What am I doing in NUS?

This is going to be a rant about the disparities between BU’s and NUS’s academic  standards. They may be a bit disjointed because I’m just going to type whatever comes to mind.

Recently I’ve been hanging out with some Singaporeans here at BU and listening in on their conversations about their academic planning. Many of them are talking about ‘overloading’ so as to graduate earlier. Makes perfect sense, since school fees are really high here ($40k per  year, not including housing, food, etc). At the same time I scoff at it.

Why do I take issue with this? Well, in BU, the standard workload is 4 courses/modules per semester, versus the 5 modules in NUS. You would think that since there is one less per sem, the workload should be correspondingly heavier, right? No. It could be a poor snapshot of things, but from the courses I have taken this semester, the workload in one module here is LESS than one module in NUS. Considerably.

Let’s say I just got lucky and got the easy modules. Even if we overcompensate, the workload is going to be about the same as NUS, per module! Thus, when they ‘overload’ there, they are actually doing the standard NUS semester load of modules, and they get to graduate one YEAR earlier -_-

Are you kidding me?? One year?! That’s a LOT of time. I know for sure because this year, 2012, has been such a long and eventful year that I can’t even believe is only one year.

Back to the course/modules (I use these two terms interchangeably because they call it ‘courses’ in BU but ‘modules ‘ in NUS) issue. I find that some (not all) of the professors here are trying to help you get an A. Like they really try, and set the quizzes/tests really easy such that you don’t even have to study from the textbook, and I know one prof deliberately sets one or two questions from the TB as if to justify the existence of the TB in the syllabus.

I’m SO pissed by this. Like if you are not going to use the textbook much, DON’T include it in the syllabus?? I don’t know why I was so stupid to purchase all my textbooks and end up using less than 10% of them.  So yes, I only had to study from the lecture notes for my exams. In NUS? Hell no. You have to memorize the bulk of the textbook for most of the core modules (can’t speak for other electives and lv4000 mods)

Further examples to show how chillax it is here – Two (out of 4) of my professors ended up not finishing the syllabus due to time  constraints – and simply cut the material out of the exam. For example, if we were originally supposed to study chapter 1-10 for the finals, she only reached chapter 8, so she said 9 and 10 will not be in.

WHAT A JOKE. Let’s first address the root issue here – they fall behind because they don’t really plan out each lesson well? I find that the profs in BU (once again, I have to emphasize that when I say ‘the profs in BU’ I don’t’ mean to generalize to everyone, but it is a lot simpler to say than ‘the profs that I encounter in BU’) do not plan far ahead – half of my courses did NOT have a complete syllabus at the start of the semester, and only gradually shaped up the syllabus as the semester progressed.

And they don’t plan out each lesson too – for example in NUS the professor will aim to complete this topic in one lecture, and will pace himself/herself to really finish it. In BU? No, it’s kind of a play-by-ear thing, and the prof stops it whenever time runs out. I don’ t think they pace their lessons well and spend way too much time trying to answer questions (there’s a lot of question asking here in the US classroom lectures), and as a result lag behind in content covered.

Some people ask me why I am so chill here – no, it’s not because I only have to pass/fail. It’s because the content is so skimpy and little, what is there to really mug?? The absence of stress for me is not because I only need to pass – I don’t have that mentality, I have quite a lot of Asian pride and want to get As (trololol) – the absence of stress is because I don’t find the volume of content particularly challenging (vs in NUS, when I really have to study regularly)

So back to the lagging behind. So as a result of poor pacing, we seem to be stuck on the same topic for weeks (we spent like 2-3 weeks on Classical Conditioning alone and another 2-3 weeks on operant conditioning alone.. and it’s not even like in-depth coverage of the available theories it’s very surface and basic. ) and I just begin to switch off during lectures. And at the end of the semester, oh oops we can’t finish the syllabus ok nvm this is not tested.

Man, if I was paying $40k/year for this, I would be pissed.

So why am I pissed? Well I think it’s ridiculous how at the end of the day, when you graduate from BU, NUS or wherever, you still end up with the same thing, a college degree. Before you even start to argue that NUS is more prestigious or anything, refer to this table on employability of graduates from global universities.




BU is actually ranked #17 in the world. Where is NUS? #36. WTF.

So let me get this straight, I spend one extra year in university, slogging my guts out in a more stressful, competitive environment with a heavier workload, and I end up half as employable as those who study in BU? (fine, the ranking is an ordinal ranking and not an interval so #34 is not half as employable as #17 but you get my point) FML seriously.

Ok end of rant. I need to go do research for my project next semester, back in NUS. Hooray.