More than 600 students have graduated from the Yale-NUS college, since the elite Yale University in the United States and the National University of Singapore (NUS) first launched a liberal arts programme in 2013.
September 2010
Yale and NUS ink a memorandum of understanding to enter into a tie-up to create a liberal arts college in Singapore. Then Education Minister Ng Eng Hen says a liberal arts education may be a somewhat new concept to Singaporeans, but over time, parents, students and employers would come to recognise its value in nurturing future leaders in all fields.
April 2011
Yale and NUS say plans are finalised and the new offshoot will be known as Yale-NUS College.
August 2013
Yale-NUS takes in its first batch of 157 students at a temporary campus in NUS University Town. Ninety-seven of them are Singaporean and the rest are from 25 other countries, selected from about 11,400 applicants from over 130 countries.
July 2015
Yale-NUS College moves into its new campus at 16 College Avenue West, near Clementi.
July and August 2017
First batch of students - 119 in total - graduate from the college after finishing a liberal arts degree programme. The college also takes in a record 250 students for its class of 2021, meeting target for its intended cohort size.
Feb 2018
Members of pioneer batch of Yale-NUS graduates enter the workforce. More than nine in 10 of them find work within six months of final examinations, a graduate employment survey finds. Jobs they take are mostly in sectors like public service, journalism, finance and the arts.
August 2021
Yale-NUS College combines with University Scholars Programme to form a new college. Says the year's Yale-NUS intake will be its last, and the batch of students will graduate as Class of 2025.
Key facts
Where is it?
The Yale-NUS campus comprises an arts centre, a library, an administration building and three residential buildings called Elm, Cendana and Saga colleges.
How many students does it take?
The aim is an intake of about 250 students a year - in early days just over 150 were accepted but the number has steadily grown. It also has about 100 faculty.
What programmes does the college offer?
Students at the college take a common curriculum before choosing a major. The common curriculum includes courses like historical immersion, quantitative reasoning, scientific inquiry as well as literature and the humanities. They then go on to choose a major - with options such as philosophy, environmental studies, global affairs and anthropology.
The college also offers special programmes with other schools in NUS such as the double degree programme in law and liberal arts as well as the concurrent degree with Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
What about fees?
For Singaporeans, tuition fees are $20,750. With residential and other fees, it comes up to a total of about $30,000. For PRs, fees are about $39,000 and foreigners pay nearly $55,000 with a tuition grant from the Education Ministry or $60,791 for PRs and $74,563 for international students without the grant.
