I wouldn’t be at Yale today,” says Hong Tran, JE ’14, “if I hadn’t received a full ride.” Cost was a recurring concern as she went through the college application process—Tran’s family’s annual income is 6,000 dollars. Yale’s financial aid package—which comes without loans, merit-based scholarships, or attention to grades and test scores—is a rare breed in the U.S., where only a handful of schools extend need-blind admissions to international applicants. If Tran had applied to Yale-NUS College in Singapore, the financial aid process, and thus her decision to enroll, might not have been so straightforward.

Although a recent release on its website announced that admissions at the planned Yale-NUS College will also be need-blind, the rest of its financial aid policy is markedly different from Yale’s. Aid at the new college will involve a mixture of merit-based scholarships, need-based aid, and loans. Costs will also be differentiated by nationality, with Singaporeans paying lower fees.

Jeremiah Quinlan, Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid at Yale-NUS, explains that the school is adopting the same differential fee policy as all other universities in Singapore. “Singapore’s Ministry of Education subsidizes tertiary education for everyone, regardless of citizenship, but it provides more for Singaporean students,” he said. Under the Tuition Grant Scheme introduced by the government in 1980, all students enrolled in full-time undergraduate or diploma courses receive a government subsidy. This subsidy comes with a condition for non-Singaporeans: They are contractually obliged to work for a Singapore-based company for three years upon graduation.

Tran, a Vietnamese student who studied in Singapore, understands the need for differential fees. “Singaporeans are already paying quite a bit for foreigners’ work and living in Singapore through taxes,” she explains. Xiner Quek, SY ’14, agrees, but takes issue with the three-year bond. “It’s morally questionable to admit a student with a condition like that,” says Quek, a Singaporean. She continues, “I don’t know if someone is ready, at 17, to grasp the magnitude of this binding agreement.”

In Singapore, bonds are a familiar feature of the higher education landscape. Every year, scholarships provided by the government and private organizations send droves of students to prestigious universities abroad. In return, the students sign a bond to work for a particular government ministry, statutory board or private company in Singapore for six years after they graduate. For local scholarships—which cover the remaining fees after the government’s tuition grant—the bond period is four years. There has been growing criticism of the practice, but bonded scholarships remain popular among students.

These scholarship contracts typically include a clause that allows the student to terminate the work agreement if he or she can afford the penalty. A similar exit clause exists in the tuition grant agreement at Yale-NUS, which is helpful for international students who do not wish to work in Singapore. “These students will not be bound by the three-year work obligation and will have the option of paying a supplementary fee in cash or covering the fee through access to a reasonable loan program offered by Yale-NUS,” Quinlan explained. He was unable to provide a figure for the fee.

Other Singaporean students have raised concerns over Yale-NUS’ policy regarding merit-based scholarships. According to the Yale-NUS website, all admitted students will be awarded one of three possible scholarships, ranked according to merit. The highest-tiered scholarship will cover the full cost of attendance, while the lowest will pay for half of room and board. But Rayner Teo, MC ’14, questions the implications of such a policy. He wrote in an e-mail to the Herald, “Will this lead to a stratification of Yale-NUS students based on the level of financial aid they received—which in turn serves as an indicator of their relative standing in their class?”

Kevin Sim, the college admissions counselor at Raffles Institution, a prestigious high school in Singapore, suggests that the experience may be difficult for some students. “Imagine walking into school, knowing that the entire population has been invisibly divided into three. Why create tiers in the student body?” he asked.

Much of the unease stems from Singaporeans’ reluctant acceptance of the competitive culture back home. Sim says that “the operative question between students tends to be: What did you get?”—a question that in Singapore could refer to a student’s academic standing, financial aid package, and even his or her allowance and brand of laptop. Teo offers an explanation: “Parents are very concerned about how their children stand in relation to their peers, and this adds a certain amount of pressure.” Sim and Teo both observe that although it is uncommon, and perhaps even inappropriate, for Yalies to discuss their grades or scholarships, Yale-NUS’ policies will play out in a very different cultural context. “At Yale, no one asks about your grades. In Singapore, this gets out in no time,” Teo says.

When asked to comment, Quinlan stated, “It’s premature to speculate about the nature of the Yale-NUS student body.”
“These distinctions are not going to be as important as the fact that all admitted students will be pioneers,” he continued, “and will be able to share in the opportunity of creating something from scratch.”