Protection for Singaporeans?

A letter to the ST Forum over the weekend called for university places to be reserved for Singaporeans. I suspect by Singaporeans, the writer Mr Ong meant Singapore citizens only (not including permanent residents).

Globalisation has created winners as well as losers, relatively if not absolutely speaking. Being a small country market, Singapore has much to gain being part of the global economy. There is no denying of the benefits economic openness has brought to Singapore. Where there is disagreement, it is about how we can as a society manage the effects of being open.

Faced with competition, there is always a danger that political pressure for protectionism will mount. First, it begins with some price discrimination for public service, charging non-citizens more for education and healthcare like what we are already doing. The next natural step will be absolute quantity controls, such as reserving education places (or jobs) for Singaporean citizens like Mr Ong suggested.

Very soon, even that will not be enough - 'Old' citizens will not be too happy with the 'New' citizens in their midst. Surely the newly naturalised citizens do not deserve same privileges generations of Singaporeans have worked hard for? What's next then? Ah, one has to be a twenty-fifth generation son-of-the-soil before special privileges are conferred.

Though I had previously disagreed with Aaron Ng on more than one occasion, I have to compliment him this time for writing something as sensible as his latest post. He has clearly spotted the danger in Mr Ong's arguments. While the instinct to protect Singaporeans from competition is highly understandable, it is plainly silly to imagine that Singaporeans will be well-served with a dose of such protectionism no matter how well-meaning it sounds.

Endnote: There is also a discussion on this topic over at Mr Wang, which I have posted some further comments. I have also reproduced my last comment on Mr Wang's blog below.


Mr Wang and All,

Can't possibly respond to every comment. I would just reiterate my point. First, let's separate the issue of scholarships for foreign students and reserving university places for Singaporeans. The former is about whether it is beneficial for us or simply wasteful of taxpayers money. The latter is about whether we should institutionalise positive discrimination (for want of a better term) for Singaporeans (however defined).

Like I said, university access has already expanded greatly for Singaporeans over the past 2 decades. We have a high proportion of graduates (around 25 per cent of each cohort if I am not wrong). I can hardly imagine a situation where further expansion of university access will not diminish the average quality of intake. Sure, some As students may not get the course of their choice, but remember, A level grades have been inflated a lot over the past decade.

If the current level of access is still not good enough, and we choose to impose further quantity controls by reserving places for Singaporeans, it is the beginning of the slippery slope towards protectionism for Singaporeans. Where does one stop?

The end result is that the market will begin to discount the degrees of local university graduates, inferencing (probably correctly) that a significant proportion of them earned their degrees only because of the institutionalised protectionism. What happens next? Eager parents will fork out even more money to send their kids overseas, even if they have local access. Why? Because they will need to separate themselves from the local graduates, whose degrees will be under a cloud of suspicion that they are not nearly good enough. Who lose? Singaporeans in the end.

I understand that this is an emotional issue, but I hope at least some of you can see my point.


Regards


On a personal note, over at Mr Wang's site, some bloggers are beginning to suggest that I come from a selfish perspective, trying to argue against greater university access for my country men. Some are even suggesting that I am not thinking straight. But consider this. If I were selfish, wouldn't I argue for greater protectionism for Singaporeans for local university entry, knowing full well and safe in the knowledge that I already have an overseas degree? Wouldn't I want to restrict the number of bright kids from overseas coming to Singapore? Go figure.

I am not arguing against greater university access. I am making a simple point that however appealing protectionism initially looks, it has a strange way of turning around and hurting the people it is supposed to protect.