University leaders must be more accountable and transparent to students and staff: Leon Perera

SINGAPORE - Scrambling for housing, irregular bus services and a lack of halal food in a university campus – these are signs that not all is well and that there should be more accountability from school leadership, said Mr Leon Perera (Aljunied GRC).

Mr Perera spoke in Parliament on Monday on improving the culture of accountability and transparency at Singapore’s institutes of higher learning and how leaders should be more accountable to students and staff.

He cited examples of incidents where the institutes behaved in ways that suggested that accountability could be lacking.

One instance was when Nanyang Technological University (NTU) international students had only two weeks to find housing after many were unsuccessful in getting accommodation in university halls.

NTU students also face a lack of halal food options and irregular buses. Its staff were initially asked to take no-pay leave at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic if they were not able to make it back to Singapore.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) also showed such issues over the merger between Yale-NUS College and the University Scholars Programme in 2021, he said, adding that the timeline for implementation was short and there was feedback from some students and staff that there was no transparency.

He said: “The decision-making process was seen by many as opaque and with limitations on the autonomy for the working group student representatives.”

He also touched on several high-profile cases of sexual misconduct at NUS where the university’s reaction was perceived by many to be lacking.

In response, Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said while he agreed that more can and is being done to improve accountability in the institutes of higher learning, accountability should be seen in a broader and more nuanced lens.

He said: “Some students or some groups of students at some point in time not getting what they want does not equate to a failure in accountability.”

He added that accountability is not just related to the desires of a certain group of students but a fair consideration of the holistic demands across the diversity of student groups.

He said: ”Not only in this generation, not only a select group of stakeholders, but for this generation, across diverse student groups and across different generations. That is accountability.”

Mr Perera said the underlying perceptions by some students and staff can be distilled into two broad ones: that some students feel that they are treated like economic digits, and that there is a perception that decisions are mostly made from the top with little transparency or consultation.

Improving accountability and transparency is important as management may have blind spots to what students and staff need, he said.

Mr Perera added that more accountability could give students and staff greater ownership over their institutions and a better experience.

He offered proposals to improve the situation, such as increasing the number of the number of rank-and-file faculty on university oversight boards, adding representatives for student bodies and staff on governing boards, and requiring petitions that have strong support to be considered.

He added that the process for setting up new student interest groups should be simplified and that best practices should be shared between institutes of higher learning.

Mr Chan said in response that the institutes of higher learning do have some mechanisms for feedback, and that not having students on such boards does not mean that consultation does not exist.

He said: “There are issues that we can have more students participation in, but there will also be issues which I don’t think will be appropriate for students participation and I think we can agree on that.”

On the suggestion for requiring petitions to be considered if they cross a certain threshold, Mr Chan disagreed. He said: “In fact, the correct thing for us to do and that’s what we’ve been doing is that we take every issue every feedback seriously, regardless whether it has reached a certain threshold of numbers.”

Mr Chan thanked Mr Perera for his suggestions, but he added: “I will emphasise this. Accountability means the understanding of diverse stakeholders’ interests, not just in the current ecosystem, but also across generations.

“And I expect the leadership of my IHLs to exercise their leadership responsibilities to make sensible decisions on what are the things to consult and what are the things that they cannot consult.”