Ratio of Singaporeans to Foreigners in Autonomous Universities for Faculty Members

Mr Leon Perera asked the Minister for Education for each year in the past 10 years, what is the respective ratio of Singaporeans to foreigners in Autonomous Universities for faculty members (i) on an overall basis (ii) for Humanities and Social Science-related departments (iii) on the tenure track and (iv) on the non-tenure track.

Mr Speaker, the number of Singaporean faculty as a proportion of the overall faculty in the Autonomous Universities (AUs) has remained stable at around 50% over the past 10 years. Based on available data over the past five years, the proportion of Singaporean faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences-related departments in our AUs is around 50%.

For National University of Singapore (NUS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore Management University (SMU) and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), which have a tenure system, the proportion of Singaporeans in tenured and tenure-track faculty has remained stable at around 40% over the past 10 years. For faculty on the non-tenure track, the proportion of Singaporeans is higher, averaging at around 60% over the past 10 years.

We will continue to work with the AUs to build a strong Singaporean Core in our faculty. The AUs actively reach out to Singaporean academics based overseas to attract them to come back to Singapore. We also support young Singaporeans keen on pursuing an academic career at the AUs through the Singapore Teaching and Academic Research Talent Scheme (START) which was introduced in 2015. There are 162 START award recipients to date.