Why am I not surprised that NUS alumni are not donating back to their alma mater?

Before I proceed, let’s have a look at some of the top American universities in terms of alumni contribution. According to the US News and World Report’s ranking on America’s Best Colleges 2007, the top American universities receive pretty strong support from their alumni. As an example, Princeton University boasts a 61% alumni giving rate, while Harvard has 44% alumni giving rate.

These figures almost made my eyes pop out when I first saw them. It simply amazes me that the alumni of these universities are so supportive of their alma mater, especially at Princeton. 6 in 10 of ALL their alumni donated back to their alma mater. It’s astonishing. Certainly, the high alumni giving rate is a clear testimony of how much these people actually cherish their time at the institution.

When I think about NUS, I’m saddened. Deeply saddened, in fact. Now that I am in my final year, I see very clearly why NUS will never be able to hit such high alumni donation rates. This is because in NUS, students have no voice.

Knowing the NUS administration, my previous sentence will have them up in arms. To them, I probably made a statement that’s grossly unfair. Well, it’s not an unfair statement. It is the truth. Students are of the opinion that they have no voice, and that they don’t matter at all. They do not feel that they have a stake in the institution.

Take for example the last two fee increases. It was announced that there would be a fee increase. Students were not consulted before the fee increases. They were ask to give feedback after the decision was made. What does it show? It shows that students don’t matter. To the ordinary student, decisions by NUS are always a done deal. Students have no say in the policy making process. They are consulted after the decision has been made, ostensibly as a form of public relations effort and damage control.

The University administration likes to say that they always consult the Students’ Union before making any decision. I know that they do consult, but the fundamental problem is still there. It’s almost always a case of “please give your comments on this decision that we are going to make”, and not “we have a problem that we would like you to help us find out how best to resolve the issue”. The NUS administration usually already have in mind what they want to do and seeking student opinion is usually more of an after-thought.

Further, it doesn’t help that the NUSSU itself is disconnected from the general student population. If what the administration claims is true that the NUSSU has always been consulted on matters that affect students, how come students know nothing until the decision is officially announced? Is it that difficult for student leaders to inform the students they represent what is going on? If the NUS administration has consulted NUSSU, why has NUSSU not consulted their students? Does NUSSU even know the ground sentiment amongst students?

In many other top ranked universities in the world, students have the ability to influence policy. Students are represented at every level of the University administration, right up to the Board of Trustees. I’ve constantly heard from NUS administrators saying that they are student centric. If indeed NUS is student-centric, then why is student representation absent from the highest decision making body of the institution?

Well, I do know the answer to that question. Policy decisions are not made in one meeting. Sometimes, it can take years to come to a decision. Student leaders have only one year in each term of office, and leadership continuity is not assured. Should there be a change in student leadership, the new guys will not be able to have sufficient background knowledge to continue from where the predecessors left off, since the new guys did not take part in the earlier stages of deliberation.

However, is that reason sufficient enough to shut out the biggest stakeholder of the university? A university without students will cease to exist. Of course, that will not happen in Singapore, but the point here is that students are the most important group of people for any university. It may not be easy to always involve students in decision making at all levels, but should the solution be to completely shut out students, or should be it be to seek alternative compromises?

I had the fortune of being able to attend the centennial dinner organised by NUS last year. The dinner was held at Suntec City,  and many alumni attended. What struck me was the age of most of the alumni that were present. It was hard to find young faces. There was a class of graduates who came together to raise funds for the event. If I don’t recall wrongly, the class graduated in the late 70s.

I think the reason why graduates of the 70s and early 80s are more supportive of NUS is simply because they had more say. The Students’ Union was way more powerful than it was today. NUSSU today is more about organising bashes, bazaars and orientation games than student representation. The union of the past staged protests and actually managed to influence policy.

Of course, I am not advocating students stage protests. My key point is that students back then have a say in the running of their institutions (even though sometimes it came about not too diplomatically). Undergraduates are young, full of energy and enthusiastic. It is a result of all these that students tend to be more vocal and expressive of their views, so much so that they will not hesitate to try and fight the establishment.

I do not see anything wrong with that. It is part and parcel of the learning and growing up process of young, idealistic students. The university can either tolerate that and deal with things as they come, which is the harder way, or the easier way would be for the university to choose not to bother about what students think and feel.

NUS has chosen the latter, and the net result is that students end up not feeling for their university anymore. The fire has been doused. If the fire has been snuffed out during their undergraduate days, it is wishful thinking that it will magically rekindle after graduation. In fact, the negative image of NUS in the mind of the students will stick until the day they die.

Can NUS really afford this? Well, it seems that the university isn’t too concerned for now. After all, they managed to land hundreds of millions of dollars worth of donations not too long ago. However, I would like to caution against such short sighted-ness. These one-off donations do not happen all the time. It is more dependable on your own alumni to support the university financially.

To illustrate my point, let’s assume that NUS has Princeton’s alumni giving rate of 61%. Working on the assumption that there are 300,000 current NUS graduates in Singapore, that would yield 183,000 graduates. If each of them pledge $100 of donation annually (which is a paltry sum for a graduate to give on an annual basis), it would yield $18.3 million dollars annually.

Using such conservative figures already yields a sizeable sum. Imagine if the figures were inceased. The potential of the alumni in providing a steady source of finance for a university to develop is enourmous. Unfortunately, NUS has let go of this opportunity by choosing not to make students feel a part of the university. Almost two decades of graduates who do not care about their alma mater have been produced. The way things are going, there will be even more students joining this group of indifferent alumni.

What about me? For now, I don’t think I will be an exception.