Danny Quah

Asian Angle | Singapore’s US$200k university salaries are worth every penny

New ideas and novel innovations raise productivity and improve citizens’ well-being. Today, Singapore’s average productivity exceeds the US, and the Lion City leads the world in a range of frontier technologies

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A priority at NUS is the development of local faculty and research-based local content in the curriculum. Photo: Handout

Danny Quah

Published: 8:00am, 17 Dec 2018Updated: 8:04am, 17 Dec 2018

Successful, high-impact research helps make universities lively, thriving communities. This effect extends well beyond the academy: meaningful intellectual pursuit raises the economic and social well-being of the nation.

When, based on leading academic research, economists such as Paul Krugman in the 1990s suggested Singapore’s growth would be unsustainable for relying too much on Singaporeans working too hard and saving too much – perspiration without inspiration – the nation’s policymaking shifted to emphasise knowledge advance and technological improvement. Today, Singapore’s average productivity exceeds the United States, and Singapore leads the world in a range of frontier technologies.

For nations where the most important asset is human capital, high-level research allows citizens to be productive and prosperous, and the nation to thrive and remain relevant. Cutting-edge research provides for a lively national conversation, and unites diverse stakeholders in challenges that uplift the spirit and improve material circumstances. New ideas and novel innovations raise productivity and improve citizens’ well-being. This has been the story of humanity for centuries; it is the narrative of all great nation states past and present, small and large.

So, it is a false dichotomy that research excellence undermines the national mission. It is a fallacy that striving for ever greater intellectual achievement is an unproductive, mutually destructive arms race.

Yet, that counterview persists. Its latest incarnation appears in the unbalanced screed Drs Lim and Pang submitted to This Week in Asia on December 3 (‘Singapore’s US$200k starter salaries: why education pays the price’) against the National University of Singapore (NUS) Presidential Young Professorship scheme – the PYP. The Lim-Pang commentary misinterprets the scheme. More generally, it represents a position ill-informed about the function of research excellence in universities.

The PYP scheme launched this month seeks improvement on the earlier Presidential Assistant Professorship scheme. That previous scheme, begun in 2014, has brought in 15 assistant professors, nine of whom are Singaporean. PYP augments the earlier scheme, not only by matching the sort of salary top PhD graduates now expect, but by adding in a start-up budget of up to S$750,000 (US$546,000) for non-STEM or S$1 million for STEM candidates, plus white space funding up to S$250,000.