In recent years, graduate employment surveys of students who take the private-school route have shown that upon graduation, they earn far less than their peers from autonomous universities and seem to find it harder to find full-time jobs. This has raised the question of whether private-school students have been wasting their time and money.

However, a study launched last year by the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) to track the job prospects of their alumni, five years after they graduate, paints a different picture.