More than 100 years after Edward S. Harkness, YC 1897, gave Yale a grant to create a housing system based on those at Oxford and Cambridge, the residential college system is poised to move to Asia for the first time. Last month, Yale officials announced plans to collaborate with the National University of Singapore (NUS) on a liberal arts college called Yale-NUS College. The college would be partially modeled after Yale and part of the large and highly-ranked research university. Its financial cost would be borne entirely by NUS and Singapore’s Ministry of Education. NUS—not Yale—would grant its degrees.

The new college is an important milestone in the realization of Yale’s plans in Asia, where it already plays an active role in many universities. It has established a student exchange program with Peking University in Beijing, the Yale Law School’s China Law Center, and technical collaboration within Fudan and Peking Universities. Since 1996, the Richard U. Light Fellowship has allowed more than 700 Yale students to pursue intensive Japanese, Korean and Chinese language study in East Asia. Furthermore, Yale already has numerous links with Singapore: It offers more than a dozen summer session courses in the country, and Singapore has consistently served as an important hub of international experience for Yalies. The new Yale India Initiative shores up Yale’s position in the region and creates ties with one of the world’s fastest growing economies.

MANY OF THESE ADVANCES IN EAST Asia have been pioneered by President Richard Levin, GRD ’74. Levin’s love affair with Asia is no secret, but Yale-NUS College may be its greatest realization. It will help establish Levin’s visionary role for Yale in East Asia. In the late 19th century Yale played an important role in terms of defining the liberal arts education; it is only fitting that the same institution, two centuries later, should play a decisive role in accompanying the liberal arts education on its journey across the globe.

Currently Singapore, like other Asian countries, faces a dearth of options when it comes to liberal arts education. Part of this is simply cultural. Rayner Teo, MC ’14, who hails from the small city-state, said “Most Singaporeans only have a very vague idea of what a liberal arts education entails. There is still much esteem attached to engineering, medicine and law, but not so much to education for its own sake.”

Educational models in Asia have historically relied on rote memorization, but Asian officials are now looking to leading U.S. and European universities for inspiration. Levin detailed this shift in an article for the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. “While U.S. and British politicians worry that Asia, and China in particular, is training mor

e scientists and engineers than the West, the Chinese and others in Asia are worrying that their students lack the independence and creativity necessary for their countries’ long-term economic growth. They fear that specialization makes their graduates narrow and that traditional Asian pedagogy makes them unimaginative,” wrote Levin.

If the core curriculum designed for Yale-NUS College influences other burgeoning liberal arts colleges in Asia, Yale’s impact could be tremendous. Singapore’s government has shown a high level of commitment towards transforming the country into a pan-Asian educational hub, and bringing a liberal arts college to Singapore bearing two names as respected as Yale and NUS is the crux of that effort.

“There are universities in China discussing liberal arts education, there are universities in Japan discussing it, but it seems that the National University of Singapore is farther ahead in the process than others,” said Professor Edward Kamens, MC ’74, GRD ’82, professor of Japanese literature and co-head of the residential college and co-curricular life planning committee for the proposed college. “I think that if the project goes forward it would offer a meaningful alternative to the traditions and institutions of higher learning that already exist in East Asia,” he added.

THE CHANCE TO BROADLY IMPACT the design of the core curriculum at Yale-NUS College is one of the biggest draws of the project for Yale. According to the prospectus, the curriculum would span both Western and Asian cultures and would prepare students for “lifelong learning in an interconnected, interdependent global environment.”

More broadly, Yale has the chance to influence the future of higher education in Asia for many decades to come. “I see it as a very bold and visionary move by Yale,” said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the practice of public policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS. “In the 21st century, with the return of Asia, the best way that Yale can create a curriculum of global universities is through developing them in Asia.” Mahbubani, who was at Yale this week for a Master’s Tea, has served as Singapore’s ambassador to the United Nations and is a well-known commentator on the global shift from West to East. Mahbubani, though not part of the committee in NUS that designed the proposal, was consulted in the project’s development by Yale.

This collaboration, which was proposed by NUS, is not its first with an American university. NUS established graduate-level programs with Duke and MIT and the first music conservatory in Singapore with the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins. According to a prospectus for the joint college released by Levin and Dean Peter Salovey on Sept. 12, these universities have expressed their satisfaction with their own programs in Singapore. The success of these programs has encouraged optimism among proponents of Yale-NUS College.

There are many perks in creating a liberal arts college within an existing, highly respected university. Students at Yale-NUS College would have access to the current NUS facilities, faculty and resources. NUS is currently ranked as the third best university in Asia and the 31 best university in the world. All classes at NUS are taught in English, so there would not be a language barrier for visiting professors form Yale.

In addition, Singapore is a symbolic location for the venture. As Mahbubani said, “Singapore can combine India and China and all other parts of Asia. So, if you want to find a place where all the main streams of Asian thought converge, it is Singapore. NUS has, over the recent past, developed a very international orientation. It has a large number of international faculty, and therefore in a sense is a natural partner for Yale.”

The actual planning process began in June 2009 when President Levin, Dean Salovey, and four members of the Yale staff traveled to Singapore to visit NUS.

IN TERMS OF RESIDENTIAL COLLEGE life, the system would be significantly adapted to thrive within the joint college model. For example, the proposed living spaces at Yale-NUS College would occupy high-rise buildings rather than being arranged around courtyards. Kamens said, “They have many challenges to make those spaces feel intimate and how to make those spaces feel like communities within the larger community of the university.”

Kamens’s committee stressed the importance of dining halls in residential college life. lege life.

officers at NUS were not thinking about having a dining hall for each of the colleges. “We were able to help them understand, by describing and by a number of visits from their faculty and administration, the central role our dining halls play in the social and cultural lives of students in the residential colleges, and how they’ve formed such an important part of the identity of the college,” said Kamens.

To promote the college, Yale set aside $30 million from its own endowment and raised close to $15 million from donors. Senior academics in political science and economics have already been appointed for Yale-NUS College, and searches for tenured appointments in history and religion are underway.

One major issue in choosing to build a college in Singapore is the question of limitations on free speech. Public demonstrations are illegal in Singapore, and the laws governing government defamation and sedition have been widely cited as reasons to proceed with caution.

“I can see how limitations on free speech would be a major cause for concern on the part of the Yale faculty,” said Teo. “As distasteful as it sounds, Yale faculty members who go to Singapore might (at least initially) have to reach some form of accommodation with their consciences.”

Teo’s view closely mirrors that of Yale’s prospectus for the project. It calls for the Yale community to recognize the differences of every nation. Levin and Salovey wrote that “Despite obvious constraints on the scope of public discourse, our investigations show that there is real opportunity for robust inquiry and discussion on the NUS campus. The limitations we would need to accept, given Singaporean tradition and law, would have to be weighed against the opportunity we have to influence over time the curriculum and pedagogy in a major part of the world.”

Early in the planning process, NUS officials were considering not having individual dining halls for each college. “We were able to help them understand by describing and by a number of visits from their faculty and administration the central role our dining halls play in the social and cultural lives of students in the residential colleges, and how they’ve formed such an important part of the identity of the college,” said Kamens.

One major issue in choosing to build a college in Singapore is the question of limitations on free speech. Public demonstrations are illegal in Singapore, and the laws governing government defamation and sedition have been widely cited as reasons to proceed with caution.

“I can see how limitations on free speech would be a major cause for concern on the part of the Yale faculty,” said Teo. “As distasteful as it sounds, Yale faculty members who go to Singapore might, at least initially, have to reach some form of accommodation with their consciences.”

Teo’s view closely mirrors that of Yale’s prospectus for the project. It calls for the Yale community to recognize the differences of every nation. Levin and Salovey wrote that “Despite obvious constraints on the scope of public discourse, our investigations show that there is real opportunity for robust inquiry and discussion on the NUS campus. The limitations we would need to accept, given Singaporean tradition and law, would have to be weighed against the opportunity we have to influence over time the curriculum and pedagogy in a major part of the world.”