Sunday, November 22, 2009
Alarmingly NUS
@10:42 PM
Seriously, I don’t understand NUS admissions policy. I’m developing some kind of grudge against them for systematic stupidity on their part, which is immediately apparent from the “confirmation of course” letter they sent me two days back.
Firstly, on the issue of medical examination: explain to me why must a medical examination be done? Ok, fine, it is out of concern on the university’s part to require students to be medically examined. Even so, how can a medical examination done months before matriculation be relevant, especially when many students will be going (or have gone) overseas before enrollment? They claim that “(admission) is conditional upon you being in good health and free from organic (or communicable) diseases”. A medical examination without a statement of recent travel history is like a political statement made out of context. To a person who has not travelled out of Singapore, or only to “safer” places like Europe and America, this examination is an utter waste of time and money.
A better policy will be to examine only people who have been to certain locations like Africa or Laos or Cambodia up to six months before matriculation. However, such a policy will be administratively tedious to execute, and to implement the original idea will be taxing on the manpower anyway, so why not just trust that we, as young adults, are responsible enough for our own health and well-being? This isn’t army, where spoon-feeding is the norm! Compulsory medical examinations basically scream that their subjects are not to be trusted.
For the second issue, let us assume at this point that we take medical examinations are all part and parcel of the game. Explain to me then, why are NUS students paying $30 for X-Ray and medical at the NUS’s own Health Centre, not including the “nominal fee” for the disposable X-Ray gown, whereas SMU students are paying only $18 for the same deal at Raffles Clinics? If I’m reading it correctly, NTU students do not even need to do the medical, so at least one university is doing it right. If you demand that people do something before their enrollment, you jolly well cover the costs of your own demand, especially since it’s your own medical centre. Granted, the tuition fees are subsidised, but we are not paying 33,000 SGD per year so that NUS can go and charge us some more in bits and pieces! For example, do you know that NUS students must pay $60 for NUS health insurance every year, even though no one seems to know exactly what the terms and conditions are? Basically, the administration here is like a huge money sucking monster, not satisfied in just taking the tuition fees, but also demanding more and more money everywhere that they can justifiably make such demands.
My last gripe with regards to the letter is not so much a complaint as it is an opportunity to poke fun.
“Please note that the Admission PIN is 8 alpha-numeric characters and is case sensitive. You can use it with immediate effect. For security reason (grammatical error), you are strongly encouraged not to reveal the PIN to anyone and
destroy this letter (another grammatical error here)
as soon as you have memorized it.”
Good grief. Admission PINs have a SECRET security classification. Not even SAF ISAC card PIN numbers are granted such a high honour of “destruction upon memorisation".
This sounds like a rant, and perhaps it is, but when I enter university, I don’t want it to be just another exercise in bureaucracy. Universities are famous for their liberal outlook and tolerance, and bureaucracy merely gets in the way of such an open culture. My gripes have their individual basis, and all feedback, negative or otherwise, can help the establishment only if they are listened to.
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