Education

Don’t let mainstream media headlines like “Most top PSLE students stay in HDB flats” (link) mislead you into thinking that HDB kids are top students.
All it takes is a sharp eye and a thinking mind to see the facts. Straits Times reader Mr Visakan Veerasamy wrote to the papers today:
“The statistics given in the (newspaper [...]

The following is the Salary.sg list of top primary schools for this year.
Ranking is done based on the vacancies available after the all-important Phase 2B. Refer to last year’s ranking for details.
The 6 schools in boldface offer the Gifted Education Programme (GEP). The other 3 GEP schools not in this top-20 list are: Tao Nan [...]

Congratulations to the latest batch of President’s Scholars. But like last year’s batch, not a single one of them will be doing a science or engineering related course.
In a way, this confirms the doom of science and technology careers in Singapore.
In fact, four of the six President’s Scholars this year will read Economics.
Although Economics is [...]

It’s been a while since the term life sciences last appeared in the mainstream media. Most recently, it appeared somewhat in the form of “green chemistry” in this CNA report talking about GlaxoSmithKline opening a facility in Singapore and sponsoring some scholarships.
The scholarships are for studies in green chemistry and public health policy.
Green chemistry? Shouldn’t [...]

We have launched Salary.sg Forums.
Now you can discuss salary, job, career and investment matters in a user-friendly forum format.
Powered by vBulletin – which is the most popular forum engine among top discussion forums worldwide – you can now view well organized threads of discussions and reply directly to a particular thread or post that is [...]

The mainstream media is apparently telling us that business degrees are no longer in demand. We are told a law degree can command a salary as high as $8,500 while arts and science courses are getting popular now.
On the front page of yesterday’s Business Times printed edition:
“Trainee lawyer bags $8,500 monthly pay
Foreign law firm pays [...]

If you believe the annual graduate employment survey reports (I don’t quite), here are the rankings for the class of 2008:
Permanent Employment Rate

NTU Arts (with Education) – 100%
NTU Maritime Studies – 100%
NTU Science (with Education) – 100%
NUS Dental Surgery – 100%
NUS Information Systems – 100%
SMU Information Systems Management (cum laude and above) – 100%
SMU Economics [...]

A popular career move during economic downturns is to go back to school.
If you’re shopping around for a good MBA school, consider BusinessWeek’s recently published rankings of U.S. and international business schools (published every other year):
Best International Business Schools

Queen’s University, Canada
IE Business School, Spain
INSEAD, France (with satellite campus in Singapore)
Western Ontario (Ivey), Canada
London Business School, [...]

Shrewd businessmen are buying degrees from degree mills and passing themselves off as “Dr” so-and-so.
Straits Times journalist Sandra Davie even managed to buy a degree for her dog! (ST, August 29, 2008).
Yes, Harry Doggy the cute beagle is now officially a “Doctor of Arts”. For just US$599.
Other people spent years slogging to get a PhD [...]

Just as we were debating whether engineering is a dead-end career in Singapore, I noticed a common trait among the 2008 batch of President’s Scholarship recipients.
None of them is going to be an engineer.
From what President Nathan said in his speech, these scholars will all be heading to foreign universities for their studies. (Hey, btw, [...]