Reining in the "Tuition" Tiger

During the schooldays in the seventies, one almost could not come across anyone having tuition for his subjects. At the very most, some of the more privileged students could be learning piano, that is about all as privileged as you can get. If you are in the elite schools eg NJC, RI or ACS at that time, to let others know that you are having tuition would tantamount to admitting intellectual inferiority or inability to cope.

Alas, how times have changed. The tuition industry has blossomed into a almost $1billion dollars industry locally catering for students ranging from the nursery to Pre-University. I am even beginning to hear of some University students asking for extra help!!!

I think we are caught in a ridiculous predicament where every well-intentioned parents will insist on providing the extra impetus so that their child can gain the extra mileage in the academic rat-race. This means often stretching at times some parents' financial limits. The schools are no helping either by insisting that students should be actively involved in a wide range of CCAs so that they can develop into well-rounded individuals. In taxing the students extraneously, they have abdicated the role of producing excellent academic results to the tuition industry. In any case, you cannot really know how much the excellent results from the students in RI or HCI are boosted with the help of having extra the tuition .

While we do not deny that there are positive aspects as to what the tuition industry can provide, one unintended negative social outcome would be that the students from less privileged background would lose out in the competitive rat-race even if all other things remain equal. Another could be the expensive cost of tuition would also be an inhibiting factor pushing down our fertility rate as would-be parents would be fearful of the overall cost of bringing up an extra child with the added tuition cost which can be substantial.  As the thinking goes, " If you can't be sure you can provide, it may be better not to have".

If think it is opportune at this point that some thoughts to be put in to rein in this tiger. I am not suggesting that we ban the tuition industry altogether. One possible approach is to apply some pressure points on the schools especially the elite schools where typically parents will have more resources to put their kids to tuition whether they need it or not.

There should be some performance metric for schools to measure the amount of tuition hours and dollars consume on a per student ratio. Schools that are able to bring down these metric should be rewarded and recognised more compare to schools that didn't. Doing so may possibly help the cost of tuition to come down.

I may be accused of proposing a levelling-down approach but if you think critically about it, this is not the case. When something has built into a big bubble, it may be time to stick a needle to slowly let out some air.

Let us be delighted to hear some hissing air out from tuition bubble as I believe we will reap the social benefits that will come along with it.