Size of Endowment Funds Linked to Differences in Student Educational Resources, Expenditure and Opportunities

14 Assoc Prof Walter Theseira asked the Minister for Education (a) whether the Ministry has studied whether the larger endowment funds held by older Autonomous Universities (AUs) result in differences in student educational resources, expenditure, and opportunities across AUs; (b) whether the Ministry will consider measures to help newer AUs build their endowments to provide their students and faculty with comparable resources; and (c) whether the Ministry has any measures to ensure that differences in endowments do not unduly affect the quality of education and research across AUs.

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education (Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim) (for the Minister for Education): Mr Speaker, our Autonomous Universities (AUs) raise donations to build up their endowment funds, which generate a steady stream of investment income to supplement annual Government funding, student fees and various grants to support University expenditures.

Since 1991, the Government has encouraged donations to tertiary education by providing 1:1 matching grants. This was raised to 1.5:1 in 2010 for AUs. For the newer institutions, for example, SUTD, SIT and SUSS, the Government further enhanced our support to them by granting them sizeable seed monies to start up their endowment fund, as well as more generous matching grants at 3:1.

The sizes of endowment funds across the AUs differ today. They depend on the ability of AUs to raise donations, investment returns and, of course, how long the AU has been in existence.

Government funding continues to be the main source of funding for University education. Regardless of which AU they are enrolled in, Singaporean students receive a subsidy of around 75% of costs. There is also an array of funding initiatives from MOE and other Government agencies that AUs can tap on to support projects and research.

The Government will continue to support every AU, both financially and otherwise, to provide the best education experience for their students.

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Walter Theseira.

Assoc Prof Walter Theseira (Nominated Member): Mr Speaker, I thank the Senior Parliamentary Secretary for his response and, of course, also MOE for funding the newer AUs generously.

National University of Singapore, I understand, has an endowment of about $4 billion. Singapore University of Social Sciences about $400 million. And these endowment funds may be used by the Universities to support scholarships, professorships, teaching and research. So, while I do not begrudge the more established Universities for their success at fund raising and using funds, I do wonder if the Ministry could monitor the use of endowment funds to contribute to teaching and research, and if it results in disproportionate access or quality, if the Ministry could use that as a consideration when granting operating funds to the Universities.

Assoc Prof Dr Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim: Mr Speaker, I thank the Member for sharing his concern. Indeed, this is what we do. In fact, we not only engage the AUs at the staff-level, even my own Minister visits all the different AUs regularly, especially the newer ones. And when we discuss, we discuss issues like these and we monitor them closely. At the end of the day, we also want to support them at the initial phase and we want to journey with them to ensure that it is about a long-term horizon. We want to develop Universities that can last for many years. NUS has been in existence for 114 years. And we want our newer ones to be like NUS and beyond, so that we can give the best education experience for Singaporeans.