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Latest Updates on Singapore’s SSRC

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Photo Credit: Wattpad, Your Singapore Dictionary

Hello, it’s me again — updating you on the latest developments in Singapore’s social science and humanities research landscape! In my class presentation, I mentioned that the Singapore government will be spending SGD$350 million (USD250 million) to strengthen social science research in the next five years. To achieve this, Singapore’s Social Science Research Council (SSRC) will be initiating and running a series of programmes from now till 2020. One of these programmes includes selecting and funding new social science-related projects proposed by professors and research fellows in Singapore. The SSRC is specifically interested in research projects that will enable the public to understand ‘[n]ew and complex challenges [that] confront Singapore as it progresses and matures as a nation’, says Mr. Peter Ho (Chairman of the SSRC).

The SSRC has *just* published a list of research projects that is approved in their first call for submissions. The SSRC has set aside SGD$21 million (USD15 million) as research grants for these projects:

  1. Christianity in Southeast Asia: Comparative Growth, Politics and Networks in Urban Centres by Dr Terence Chong, Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute
  2. Develop a Contemporary Theory of Harmony by Professor Li Chenyang, NTU
  3. Fostering Harmonious Intergroup Relations in Early Childhood by Assistant Professor Setoh Pei Pei, NTU
  4. Identifying Positive Adaptive Pathways in Low-income families in Singapore by Associate Professor Esther Goh, NUS
  5. Influence of Social Motivations on Cultural Learning, Adjustment, and Integration by Associate Professor Krishna Savani, NTU
  6. Making Identity Count in Asia: Identity Relations in Singapore and its Neighbourhood by Professor Ted Hopf, NUS
  7. Population ageing, old age labour and financial decisions in Singapore by Associate Professor Liu Haoming, NUS
  8. Salutogenic Healthy Aging Programme Embracement (Shape) for elderly living alone by Assistant Professor Wang Wenru, NUS
  9. Singapore’s Islamic Studies Graduates: Their Role and Impact in a Plural Society by Dr Norshahril Saat, Iseas-Yusof Ishak Institute
  10. Building Human Capacity in Singapore’s Population: Testing Innovations in Human Development by Professor Jean Yeung, NUS
  11. Service Productivity and Innovation Research Programme (Spire) by Professor Ivan Png, NUS
  12. Sustainable governance of transboundary environmental commons in Southeast Asia by Professor David Taylor, NUS

More information on the SSRC’s recent approval of these projects can be found here: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/21-million-in-grants-awarded-for-12-research-projects-on-singapore-society-identity?xtor=CS3-18

Feel free to share your take on the projects that have been selected, and the outcomes you will like to see from these projects!

Foreign Student-Workers in Japan

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Hello!

I follow the Japan Times pretty regularly, and an article came up a couple days ago discussing the number of foreign students who are working in Japan.

The article states that the Ministry of Education’s plan is to reach 300,000 foreign students by 2020, a plan which is well on its way. But it also discusses the policy behind work visas (which do no exist in Japan), and that foreigners with student visas are allowed to work 28 hours a week. Most foreign students are coming from China and Korea, with an increasing number from SE Asia, and they feel compelled to work. This may prevent them from reaching their educational goals. The students in the article are going through language school in preparation for IT or engineering programs. It seems language schools are feeders for unofficial, cheap foreign labor.

What the article doesn’t explain is what proportion of foreign students are genuinely working towards their education goals, and what proportion might be exploiting the system to work in Japan? How many foreign students make it through their language programs and into their higher education program of choice? How many do not make it and have to return home? I imagine, and the article states, that there is incentive to keep these foreign students in Japan to work the low-level jobs, but what are the long term implications if this “under the table” arrangement, especially if these students’ long-term educational goals are never realized?

I’m looking at you Hiro and Sho! And anyone else, of course 🙂

The link to the article is below.

The cost of convenience in Japan: when foreign students work instead of study

 

Helpful Guide for Writing Research Papers in the Social Sciences

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Hi Colleagues
Here’s the guide book that Alessia mentioned during our class just now:
Becker, Howard. Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You’re Doing It, University of Chicago Press: 1998.
Drawing on more than four decades of experience as a researcher and teacher, Howard Becker now brings to students and researchers the many valuable techniques he has learned. Tricks of the Trade will help students learn how to think about research projects. Assisted by Becker’s sage advice, students can make better sense of their research and simultaneously generate fresh ideas on where to look next for new data. The tricks cover four broad areas of social science: the creation of the “imagery” to guide research; methods of “sampling” to generate maximum variety in the data; the development of “concepts” to organize findings; and the use of “logical” methods to explore systematically the implications of what is found. Becker’s advice ranges from simple tricks such as changing an interview question from “Why?” to “How?” (as a way of getting people to talk without asking for a justification) to more technical tricks such as how to manipulate truth tables.

Race to Nowhere VS Amy Chua (Arts Group)

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Race to Nowhere VS Amy Chua

 

After watching “The Three Idiots” last week, I thought it would be interesting to find a movie on education in the United States. Though not about the American higher education system, “Race to Nowhere” painted a picture of the American education system that shared many surprising similarities with many of the characteristics or even stereotypes of the Asian education systems.

“Race to Nowhere” is a 2009 documentary film by Maimone Attia and directed by Vicki Abeles and Jessica Congdon. The film is partially based on the personal story of co-director Vicki Abeles, as the pressure of school, tutoring and extracurricular activities were making her middle school daughter sick. However, the film aims to challenge the public to think about the amount of pressure that parents are putting on children to push them to succeed.  The film featured the stress young children experience with over-scheduling, over-testing and getting into the top colleges in the country. The film coined such unhealthy pressure and competition among students as a “silent epidemic” and advocated for a reform of the education reform in the US. “Race to Nowhere” was shown nationwide and internationally in more than 7,000 schools, and became a center grass-root movement for education reform.

You can watch the entire movie on Netflix.

On the other hand, I was immediately reminded of another prominent yet controversial voice, Tiger Mom-Amy Chua, a professor at Yale Law School. Amy Chua is the author of the book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, a New York Times Bestseller memoir that revealed the strict “Chinese” way that she raised her two children. The ways that Amy Chua talked extensively and proudly about in her memoir almost completely contradicted of the purpose of the movie “Race to Nowhere”. Ironically, the amount of stress that Amy Chua put on her children resulted in what was considered “success” by the parents in the movie, as both of Amy Chua’s daughters attended Ivy League schools and received enormous recognition of their music talents.

As we discuss higher education today, the conversations are not limited to curriculum and policies after students enrolled in higher education institutions, but also included what happened prior in order to get the students where they are today. Attending top universities, getting scholarships and obtaining resources are issues of accessibility and affordability.

You can find Amy Chua’s website here: http://amychua.com/the-book/

I would love to hear about your thoughts!

Higher Education and Unemployment : East Asia

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As we begin to delve deeper into higher education in East Asian countries, our group would like to present some data on an economic aspect that is closely related to higher education, but isn’t always discussed in relation with it: Unemployment among the educated. We came across an interesting article (http://theconversation.com/massive-expansion-of-universities-in-asia-raises-tough-questions-on-social-mobility-54680) which talks about the high growth rate of higher education enrollments in East Asia and the statistics on lack of employment opportunities for those with college degrees. Following is a comparison of statistics from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea in the year 2014. China seems to be an outlier with the highest unemployment rates among recent graduates. The article raises an important question that has been discussed in many forms in our class: What is the point of more higher education when an economy cannot gainfully absorb all the graduates? And what are the consequences if these conditions persist over a long period of time?

Note: The unemployment statistics from the article have not been checked by us. We are assuming that the usual definition of unemployment applies here: The percentage of people in a group (such as undergraduates or graduates) that are looking for employment and are not yet employed.