The latest addition to Singapore’s education landscape is the Yale-NUS College, which held an Inauguration Ceremony on 27 August 2013, to officially mark the start of its undergraduate academic year. Since 2009, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Yale have been in discussion to set up the first liberal arts college in Singapore.
The college attracted 11,400 applicants from over 130 countries. In the end, it opened with 155 students (five more than planned) of 26 nationalities. Based on the response and high calibre of applications, the college is confident that they will be able to grow the annual intake to 250 students over the next few years. The official campus is being built and will be ready in 2015.
The college promises a broad-based education with smaller classes and a full residential programme that integrates learning and living. Students will take common courses in the first two years and focus on a major in the third. The fourth is made up of electives and an individual year-long project that students may design. In addition, students at Yale-NUS College will have the opportunity to study abroad or have an overseas internship. They can participate in student exchanges, drawing on existing partnerships of both parent institutions. In fact this inaugural batch of students started with a three-week summer immersion at Yale. Other opportunities include mystery internships where students will only be informed where they are heading on the first day of the programme.
Tuition fee at Yale-NUS College is approximately £7,500 per year for Singaporeans and £15,000 for international students. This is similar to what students pay for an Arts and Social Science course in NUS, which makes affordability another possible attraction.