Its now D+14. In military terms D means Day of attack/operation and the subsequent term is usually a variable referencing to the start date eg D+1 is the day after the attack date. Sunny outlook to the weather today at a warm 19 degrees Celsius and I had my first morning lecture after a span of 5years+. The lecturer was a burly guy with a sense of humor. He did'nt even bat an eyelid when I told him I only enrolled on the 02 Aug 07 ( I missed 4 of his lectures and was without a work group). In typical Australian style assurance was given, several questions asked and everything was alrite and dandy mate! Transfer this scenario to an Asian setting and I would probably have been sentenced to academic doom.
Tolerance is a familiar term to me, in my line of work it means a set of variation limits which an instrument/test must achieve to validate its performance being reliable. In life however tolerance is so much more than meets the eye. So far in my 2 weeks+1 , I have found the locals to be a tolerant lot generally. Gay couples holding hands in streets, professors dressing down, treating students enrolling in late cordially etc. Most of the Uni staff I have come into contact with seem to understand difficulties faced by international students. In addition, options are open to students for alternative modules to get credit accumulations aside from those offered as part of the course packages. Wow, academic flexibility. I have had little of this back in my alma mater. I recall in my sophomore year, my request to switch to the degree course in food science and technology was rejected outright by a professor and was told if I wanted to take that up I had to quit and reapply. This was despite the fact that I had a food science and technology diploma. Resigned to fate, I completed my basic degree and graduated without attending the convocation. Honors year wasn't even a consideration, I was incensed and felt stifled. I was robbed of an opportunity to study my subject of interest in my very own homeland. And I wasn't even a bad student with crappy grades. Perhaps I'm dull but I never understood the reason why I had no right to pursue an area of my interest even though I had the relevant qualifications.
Hence fast forward to 5years later, when my financials allowed I applied for an Msc with UNSW. I was choosing an alternative module to replace one which was unavailable and my professor offered me a postgraduate food science module to which I replied " Yea I can do that I have a diploma in food science & technology." "Brilliant!"he said. And thats what flexible learning should be.
By clamping down on students' interests the majority produced will be book-crunching grade chasing graduates with little drive & passion for their discipline outside of the classroom(from experience most fresh graduates I see in work forget the stuff they learn at our local universities). Do not forget that the majority of the people fall into the middle range of the cumulative curve. Outright geniuses are few, so if you just focus on these you end up with a ton of mediocres. Pareto Logic at work breeding scholars?Focus on 20% of the significant who may contribute to the nation's success? My humble opinion is: To improve the quality of workforce, people should be encouraged to take up subjects which interest them and their education should be broadbased so that they will possess knowledge across the board and the drive to improve/upgrade. Who knows , maybe one day they may even contribute to the progress of their subjects. Geniuses are not the only ones who come up with discoveries. Serendipity occurs for many great findings, but in the hands of a person with mediocre understanding he/she won't even recognize the discovery. Which is why we should not be producing people who know how to rattle off the abcs of their trade but lack the deeper understanding on how to apply their discipline. This is the age of knowledge based economy. Technology unites many disciplines, thus there is need to produce talents who can apply their knowledge and not just statistical numbers to meet industrial requirements.
One can fish in rivers of trout and catch a good meal, but it is in the seas that you catch a trophy like the marlin-> Part of the reason why Australia has got a number nobel prize winners while Singapore is still trying in vain to breed some. Luring scientists with $ is not a long term solution at all. Believe in the people, nurture them and they will deliver. As far back as my polytechnic days I have had ideas for Singapore: Having areas on top of HDB Flats for horticulture. Also about 8 years ago I had I thought about utilizing a combination of air-flushing toilets with biogas technology and solar energy for fueling military camps. Its both strategically wise and Nsfs can be trained to use air-flushing toilets easily. This will condition an entire generation to the biogas system and this is good because natural gas and oil will run out one day. Then what will Singapore run on? The current trend seems that we are emulating Monaco and Las Vegas. Good forward thinking but we should do more and start thinking on what our energy options are. What about tidal energy? We are surrounded by water and are we taking advantage of this? Instead of the overwhelming costs of building tidal dams why don't we try an array of undersea turbines to generate tidal energy. Even if we lack the sea space for practical application, at least we are able to develop and sell the technology. Do we have scholars involved in research on super-conducting transformers as well? I can assure you that there are a number of Singaporeans with sound ideas out there but will anyone listen? No because the general idea is if you are not a scholar, step aside.
Tolerance is a familiar term to me, in my line of work it means a set of variation limits which an instrument/test must achieve to validate its performance being reliable. In life however tolerance is so much more than meets the eye. So far in my 2 weeks+1 , I have found the locals to be a tolerant lot generally. Gay couples holding hands in streets, professors dressing down, treating students enrolling in late cordially etc. Most of the Uni staff I have come into contact with seem to understand difficulties faced by international students. In addition, options are open to students for alternative modules to get credit accumulations aside from those offered as part of the course packages. Wow, academic flexibility. I have had little of this back in my alma mater. I recall in my sophomore year, my request to switch to the degree course in food science and technology was rejected outright by a professor and was told if I wanted to take that up I had to quit and reapply. This was despite the fact that I had a food science and technology diploma. Resigned to fate, I completed my basic degree and graduated without attending the convocation. Honors year wasn't even a consideration, I was incensed and felt stifled. I was robbed of an opportunity to study my subject of interest in my very own homeland. And I wasn't even a bad student with crappy grades. Perhaps I'm dull but I never understood the reason why I had no right to pursue an area of my interest even though I had the relevant qualifications.
Hence fast forward to 5years later, when my financials allowed I applied for an Msc with UNSW. I was choosing an alternative module to replace one which was unavailable and my professor offered me a postgraduate food science module to which I replied " Yea I can do that I have a diploma in food science & technology." "Brilliant!"he said. And thats what flexible learning should be.
By clamping down on students' interests the majority produced will be book-crunching grade chasing graduates with little drive & passion for their discipline outside of the classroom(from experience most fresh graduates I see in work forget the stuff they learn at our local universities). Do not forget that the majority of the people fall into the middle range of the cumulative curve. Outright geniuses are few, so if you just focus on these you end up with a ton of mediocres. Pareto Logic at work breeding scholars?Focus on 20% of the significant who may contribute to the nation's success? My humble opinion is: To improve the quality of workforce, people should be encouraged to take up subjects which interest them and their education should be broadbased so that they will possess knowledge across the board and the drive to improve/upgrade. Who knows , maybe one day they may even contribute to the progress of their subjects. Geniuses are not the only ones who come up with discoveries. Serendipity occurs for many great findings, but in the hands of a person with mediocre understanding he/she won't even recognize the discovery. Which is why we should not be producing people who know how to rattle off the abcs of their trade but lack the deeper understanding on how to apply their discipline. This is the age of knowledge based economy. Technology unites many disciplines, thus there is need to produce talents who can apply their knowledge and not just statistical numbers to meet industrial requirements.
One can fish in rivers of trout and catch a good meal, but it is in the seas that you catch a trophy like the marlin-> Part of the reason why Australia has got a number nobel prize winners while Singapore is still trying in vain to breed some. Luring scientists with $ is not a long term solution at all. Believe in the people, nurture them and they will deliver. As far back as my polytechnic days I have had ideas for Singapore: Having areas on top of HDB Flats for horticulture. Also about 8 years ago I had I thought about utilizing a combination of air-flushing toilets with biogas technology and solar energy for fueling military camps. Its both strategically wise and Nsfs can be trained to use air-flushing toilets easily. This will condition an entire generation to the biogas system and this is good because natural gas and oil will run out one day. Then what will Singapore run on? The current trend seems that we are emulating Monaco and Las Vegas. Good forward thinking but we should do more and start thinking on what our energy options are. What about tidal energy? We are surrounded by water and are we taking advantage of this? Instead of the overwhelming costs of building tidal dams why don't we try an array of undersea turbines to generate tidal energy. Even if we lack the sea space for practical application, at least we are able to develop and sell the technology. Do we have scholars involved in research on super-conducting transformers as well? I can assure you that there are a number of Singaporeans with sound ideas out there but will anyone listen? No because the general idea is if you are not a scholar, step aside.
