Yale-NUS College to cease by 2025 as NUS plans to open new college from 2022

Yale-NUS College, Singapore’s first liberal arts institution set up by Yale and the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2011, will cease in 2025 after its current first-year students have graduated.

In a press release on Friday (27 Aug), NUS announced that it will establish a provisionally named “New College”, which will merge Yale-NUS College with NUS’ University Scholars Programme (USP).

It said that the formation of the new college is the “latest move in NUS’ efforts to transform the educational experience at Singapore’s flagship university”, which will welcome its first intake of up to 500 students in the academic year of 2022.

NUS added that the new college will be in a position of strength and identity to offer broader and more specialised offerings through deeper integration with NUS.

"Students will experience the model of immersive and interdisciplinary learning characterised by flexible curriculum, residential living and small group teaching," it said, with graduating students earning degrees conferred by their respective home school or faculty.

This will mean that Yale-NUS College will cease in 2025, after the graduation of its current first-year students.

According to its news website, Yale-NUS will provide current students – about 250 per cohort – a full array of programming and courses through their graduation, but will not admit a new cohort for the 2022/23 academic year.

The Connecticut-based university said that the original affiliation agreement signed in 2011 between NUS and Yale has always given either party the opportunity to withdraw in 2025.

“By announcing four years in advance its intention to withdraw, NUS is providing all current Yale-NUS College students the chance to complete their undergraduate studies as planned,” it asserted.

NUS president professor Tan Eng Chye noted that Yale University will continue to play “an advisory role” in the new college as a pioneering member of its international advisory panel.

Yale representatives will play no role in the oversight of the new college, but Yale’s Vice President for Global Strategy Prof Pericles Lewis, who served as founding president of Yale-NUS College from 2012 to 2017, will join its planning committee.

“The New College will not bear Yale’s name, but I trust Yale’s spirit will be infused throughout its academic and residential life,” said Prof Lewis.

NUS also announced on Friday the merger of its Faculty of Engineering and School of Design and Environment to form the College of Design and Engineering.

Questions of academic freedom were not contributing factor to Yale-NUS closure, says Prof Lewis

According to Yale Daily News, Yale-NUS has been primarily funded by the Singapore government which is known for being “authoritarian” that restricts freedom of speech within the country.

This led to some critics claiming that the College did not clearly articulate guidelines for free expression and nondiscrimination, and for putting Yale’s name on an education institution beyond its control.

In 2016, Singapore’s ambassador-at-large Chan Heng Chee, who is also a member of the Yale-NUS governing board, sparked a heated debate on the campus after she publicly defended Singapore’s sodomy law.

She defended Singapore’s decision to uphold Section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes sex between mutually consenting adult men, at the United Nations Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review in Geneva.

In 2018, some 29 students at Yale-NUS College conducted a silent sit-in protest as they were unhappy with certain school policies. The students also explained in a letter that they were tired of not being heard despite multiple attempts to communicate with the school.

They demanded reinstating monthly town halls for all students and the senior leadership, as well as an open and transparent communication process.

The students also called for the involvement of students in the deliberation of any policy that affects them, and asked to develop a college-wide honour code that applies to all stakeholders of the college.

Moving forward to 2019, the Yale-NUS course “Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore”, which was scheduled to be run by playwright Alfian Sa’at and programme manager Tan Yock Theng of NUS, was cancelled as Alfian was told that the course was insufficiently academically rigorous and could pose a legal risk to the students.

Yale News Daily’s report highlighted that Prof Lewis investigated the matter but he did not find any evidence of government coercion.

Donald Low, a Singaporean senior lecturer at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said that the cancellation signals something “more important than a spat over differing versions between an academic institution and an artist/playwright”, and even “the state of academic freedom in our universities”.

“As Alfian says, he doesn’t care if the college cancels the program; that’s the college’s prerogative. Alfian simply wants the Yale-NUS leadership to assume responsibility for its decision to cancel the module and not scapegoat him with some dubious and unsubstantiated accusations about the lack of ‘academic rigour’ or ‘putting students at legal risk’.

“Ultimately, it’s about the kind of academic leadership we have. Are they accountable for their decisions/actions? We’ve seen this sort of unfounded accusations, scapegoating and blame-shifting before,” he alleged.

Nevertheless, Prof Lewis noted on Friday that the closing of Yale-NUS was not due to questions of academic freedom, adding that the NUS and the Singapore government have been “very supportive of academic freedom” at the College.

“We’ve been very satisfied with the ability of Yale-NUS students and faculty to exercise their academic freedom and have a really great experience there. That has not been a problem from our point of view,” he said, as quoted by Yale News Daily.