Who will be Singapore's next education minister now that Tharman Shanmugaratnam (picture from Singapore Ministry of Finance) becomes finance minister from tomorrow? The question assumes importance because though he has been a good education minister bold and innovative at the school level, Singapore has come down in the world of university rankings. The National University of Singapore dropped from 19th to 33rd and Nanyang Technological University from 61st to 69th in the 2007 Times Higher Education Supplement-Quacquarelli Symonds World University rankings published earlier this month.
Hong Kong universities have done significantly better with the University of Hong Kong moving up to 18th from 33rd, the Chinese University of Hong Kong up from 50th to 38th, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology -- a new entry -- ranked 53rd in the same survey.
I wouldn't lose any sleep over the rankings for a simple reason. The University of Hong Kong is ranked 18th, Stanford 19th and Cornell 20th. But where would most students go if they had a choice? However, university rankings are taken seriously in Singapore. Education is a big business in Singapore, which attracts a lot of foreign students.
Singapore's efforts to woo foreign universities have suffered setbacks in recent years. Britain's Warwick University decided not to set up a campus in Singapore, alleging a lack of political freedom in the city state, and Australia's University of New South Wales pulled out after failing to attract sufficient students.
But Singapore has enjoyed some notable success too with New York University's Tisch School of the Arts opening a campus in the city state.
On the whole, Singapore has done well with Tharman Shanmugaratnam as education minister.
Tharman, who takes over the finance portfolio from prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, is eminently qualified for the job, having been managing director of the central bank, Monetary Authority of Singapore. He has risen through sheer ability despite one run-in with the law. As Reuters points out:
He was fined 1,500 Singapore dollars as director of the central bank's economics department after being found guilty on one charge of endangering the secrecy of unpublished growth data in 1992. (The classified figures were published in Singapore's Business Times newspaper.)
He became a politician in 2001, and was appointed education minister in August 2004, before also becoming second minister for finance in May 2006.
