Applying a ‘glonacal’ framework: the education choices of academically elite students in Singapore in relation to state scholarships

ABSTRACT

This study is an attempt at better understanding the education choices of top-performing students in elite schooling. It applies a ‘glonacal’ framework (Maxwell 2018, “Changing Spaces – The Reshaping of (Elite) Education Through Internationalisation.” In Elite Education and Internationalization: From the Early Years Into Higher Education, edited by C. Maxwell, U. Deppe, H. Kruger, and W. Helsper, 347–367. London: Palgrave Macmillan.) and focuses on the case of academically elite students who have graduated from an elite secondary school in Singapore, and their attitudes toward a scheme of undergraduate state scholarships. Drawing on life history interviews and focus group discussions with such individuals, I uncover how Singaporean informants portrayed aspirations of moving abroad for university education, and of returning to Singapore, commensurate with the state’s strategy of tying them to the local through contractual bonds. Their characterisation of the scholarship in terms of ‘comfort’ and ‘stability’ must be contextualised within a nationalistic regime linking an elitist education system via scholarships to the local sphere of social and political power. The discussion serves to demonstrate relations between transnational mobility, the school and the local political economy, and how these have an influence on student subjectivities regarding education choices.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational mobility
• elite schooling
• education choices
• state scholarships
• Singapore

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 A statutory board is an organisation within the government (not full ministries) that has been afforded some autonomy in its operations.

1 A number of these immigrant students have since attained Permanent Residency or citizenship status in Singapore.

2 There are thus innumerable examples of the children of prominent political leaders and top civil servants who are also scholarship holders. Lee Hsien Loong, the current Prime Minister and son of Lee Kuan Yew, was a President and SAF overseas scholar. PM Lee’s son was also awarded the SAFOS. The son of Walter Woon, the former Attorney General, was awarded an overseas scholarship.

3 The PAP is the dominant political party in Singapore, having won every parliamentary election by at least 60% of electoral votes since the nation-state’s independence in 1965.

4 A government-linked corporation. That is, a private company owned by the Singapore government’s investment arm.

5 Anecdotally, there have been cases where private corporations have paid off the contractual bond of government scholars as a form of ‘talent poaching’.

6 Singapore has the third highest GDP per capita in the world (World Bank website 2019), and is often among the top cities in quality of living rankings (Mercer 2017). These all suggest a standard of living comparable to any city in Western Europe or North America, especially if one were an academic elite with a state scholarship.

7 Various scholars have consistently suggested how neoliberal economic policies in countries such as the UK have eroded job security and employment protection by diminishing state regulation (Navarro 1998; Harcourt and Wood 2007; Newman 2011).

8 Chua (2017) similarly argues that the Singapore state’s communitarian ideology and policies challenge and reject western liberal approaches to governance.

9 As far back as 1974, Fortune magazine described the nation as ‘Singapore Inc’, by virtue of how it is run like a business corporation, with its bureaucrats labeled ‘mandarins’ selected via a meritocratic system (Kraar 2015).