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The National University of Singapore (NUS) will bring together two of its faculties, one of them the largest, to form a new interdisciplinary university next year.
It has been proposed that the College of Arts and Social Sciences, which has the highest enrollment in NUS, with 6,404 college students in the final academic year, merge with the College of Sciences to form the College of Humanities and Sciences, The Straits Times. has learned.
Both colleges are located on the university’s Kent Ridge campus.
The two faculties will continue to exist, with plans for their current deans, Professor Robbie Goh from the College of Arts and Social Sciences and Professor Sun Yeneng from the College of Sciences, to become co-chairs of the new university, ST understands.
A spokesperson for the NUS confirmed that “the proposal is still in the consultation stage.”
Internal consultations, based on a working draft for the proposed new university that was distributed to faculty members, began shortly after NUS President Tan Eng Chye wrote a comment in The Straits Times this month about the need for universities to move from subject specialization to interdisciplinarity. teaching and research.
According to the working draft seen by ST, the students of the faculty will have access to the facilities and courses in humanities, social sciences, science and mathematics offered by both faculties.
This move towards more interdisciplinary learning comes along with the Ministry of Education’s push in recent years for graduates to have basic skills and knowledge, while remaining versatile and adaptable to future conditions.
In June, then-Minister of Education Ong Ye Kung said graduates need a broader experience to face an ever-changing landscape in the future, calling for a “bigger transformative push” to this end.
If approved, the new university could begin accepting students as early as the next academic year that begins next August.
Professor Tan said the proposed university will equip students with market-relevant skills to thrive in the economy of the future.
“The rapid pace of change in many industries means that the old model of intense academic specialization will no longer work for our young adults.
“Rather, graduates into the workforce will need breadth of knowledge, depth, as well as the ability to integrate multiple disciplines to solve complex problems,” he said.
He added that NUS has been a pioneer in interdisciplinary teaching and learning for the past 20 years, and its academics also excel at interdisciplinary research.
NUS will offer 10 cross-curricular degree programs starting in August next year to take advantage of synergies between complementary disciplines. Some possible combinations of complementary disciplines include economics and data science, computer science and project management, as well as engineering and business.
Dr. Timothy Chan, director of SIM Global Education’s student and academic development divisions, noted that the new university will see “two very different domains of expertise together.”
“One is hard natural science, while the other is the arts and humanities,” he said. “When dealing with real life problems, in addition to scientific research, a humanistic aspect is needed to consider the social implications.”
Correction note: An earlier version of the story used the word “fused” to describe the new arrangement. However, NUS would like to clarify that the two faculties will remain separate and will simply merge.
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