The recent hike in Singapore university tuition fees (15% for SMU, 3% for NUS and NTU) seems to have evoked some harsh responses. Besides the few groans that I’ve been getting from my friends, there’s one particularly harsh one that I’ve come across online (or rather, on blog). I’m sure it’s not the only one, and I actually feel it’s a fair response.

Mr. Udders over at udders.blogsome.com comments that the magnitude of the 3% fee hike isn’t the problem, but the necessity of the increase is. He then goes on to talk about other cost-related moves the National University of Singapore (NUS) has proposed, such as charging for parking bikes.

But the crux of the whole post lies in this excerpt. Read for yourself:

i think the moral of the story is for the fundamental solution to be: getting to the root cause of the problem and solving it to prevent any further issues or vicious cycles, and not thinking in the small picture then being reactive and coming up with knee-jerk solutions. if the prices of things start to rise, an appropriate knee-jerk response would be to increase fees. but could it be that there is some fat around the belly of the NUS administration that it has not/has yet to/does not want to trim? if so, then i think the NUS admin is seriously in need of some getting-of-its-act-together.