Student to Faculty Ratio at Autonomous Universities

Ms Ellen Lee asked the Minister for Education (a) what are the Ministry's guidelines on the minimum student to faculty ratio at our publicly-funded Autonomous Universities (AUs) for (i) tutorials and seminars; and (ii) laboratory and practical sessions; and (b) whether the Ministry conducts regular or random on-site checks on the key teaching quality parameters at our AUs and, if so, (i) how frequent are these checks; and (ii) how does the Ministry ensure that such checks are independent, comprehensive and credible.

Student to faculty ratios (SFRs) at the autonomous universities (AUs) vary according to the needs of the discipline and the pedagogical approach. For example, programmes such as Science, Engineering, Social Science, and Business have an average SFR of 20:1. Class sizes for lectures, tutorials, seminars and laboratory classes also vary as these serve different learning outcomes. Tutorials, for example, are meant to enable more interaction and discussion between students and tutors, and therefore have fewer students per session than lectures.

MOE does not impose a minimum SFR. As autonomous entities, the AUs are responsible for managing their own performance, including the quality of teaching. They conduct dialogue sessions with their students to receive feedback on the quality of the educational experience, and to take actions to continuously improve on this. MOE holds the AUs accountable through our performance management framework, which includes commissioning an independent external review panel made up of local and international industry leaders, professionals and eminent academics to review, among other things, the quality of teaching and learning in each university once every five years.