SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) has defended its promotion and tenure policies, describing them as "robust", in response to a debate on tenureships and the need to build a Singaporean academic core.

While explaining that the attrition rate for faculty on its tenure track has remained around an annual 4.1 per cent over the last three years, NUS Provost Ho Teck Hua said that in 2017, about six in 10 assistant professors who applied for tenure were successful, stressing that the rate is higher than at many top universities around the world. He noted that the success rate is heavily dependent of the quality of tenure applicants.