As a business management school, it is a good place to network (great internship opportunities & corporate partnerships); hone real world soft-skills (mandatory group projects, class presentations & a class participation component); and become highly-trained for a narrow business skill (e.g. marketing, finance, business psychology).
What it is not effective at is:
Encouraging people to be nice - selflessly, genuinely nice, without any personal agenda. Due to limited supply and excess demand, opportunities are competitive in SMU. Throw in a widely-lauded corporate culture, you have a Darwinian fiesta - especially for School of Law, Economics, and Business. There are nice people in SMU, and there are giving people and numerous volunteer projects. But by and large, most of us live in a tunnel-hole of self-interest.
Igniting intellectual curiosity and academic passion. Knowledge is treated as means to an end, as GPAs and academic rankings are seen as shorthand indicators of success. Also, research integrity is often undermined when five project deadlines clash in the same week.
Creating well-rounded humanists, who read beyond business textbooks and research journals - to have a basic grasp of world histories, geographies, and cultures. We have "core modules" -compulsory classes - like Analytical Skills, Creative Thinking, Leadership and Team Building, designed to expand our minds. But perhaps with the exception of students from Social Sciences and Law school, most students have exceedingly limited general knowledge.
Creating trail-blazers, industry leaders, game changers, creative thinkers. Singaporeans, and/or SMU students, are terrified of failure. There are some entrepreneurial minds, but there is a culture of systematic fear and shame for those who do something outrageous, different, unique - and fail. My friends who studied in California, for instance, tells me these risk-takers are applauded. But in Singapore - even in SMU, they are oft ridiculed.
To be fair, SMU is Singapore's the youngest university & we are more fun than NTU and NUS. They have great points, and it is too premature to judge our intellectual track-record based on our short academic history. Plus, SMU has never pretended to be a liberal arts university, which markets itself based on Points 2 & 3 (But oh wait, I think we did.) In fact, we have great professors, supportive management, AMAZING visiting academics, and relatively prescient leadership. We have the best student welfare in Singapore: free clinic consultations, campus-wide parties, and student discounts for almost every retail product imaginable! We pulse in the middle of Singapore's food, entertainment, culture, and commerce scene. We are like the NYU of the East: minus the arts, double the finance, and triple on hard-nosed "pragmatism".
However, the question is - what is the point of a college education? For free perks, shiny resumes, fancy parties? Or is it for us to learn, share, and grow - to explore, take risks, and practice failing better? I had always thought it was essential to make most of my thought experiments (and failures) - in school, before I graduate into the high-stakes working reality. Is that not what education is about?
And why is our curriculum designed to make us great employees and employers, and NOT great people WE want ourselves to be? We have stunning access to so much choice: overseas exchange trips, community projects, career talks. But they only reinforce the idea that we need to conform to a narrow definition of success, in order to be employable, high-level managers that - wait for it, are not what leaders and thinkers are made of. We are students that thrive on late-night meetings, weekend study sessions; motivated by survival anxiety, an Asian sense of duty, an unfailing Singaporean work ethic. We have little self-direction and worse still, no clear life purpose. The brightest, the smartest people I meet in school are almost always filtered out of the system - they procrastinate, switch off in school, and do badly for exams. The students that succeed are those content to play by the rules - and who then trade off their private passions for a 9-5 office job.
When you are in a factory valve that efficiently steam-rolls away your passion, inspiration, grit, and character - when risk and failure costs you your future 'employable' stakes - when pursuing your passion may incite jealousy, criticism, and accusations of being "self-indulgent" from peers- how much different, can this "Different U" be?
To use a metaphor crudely, SMU, like her counterparts across the island, teaches how you to jump hoops. Unlike them, SMU teaches you to do it in the most stylish, interesting, attention-grabbing way. You might enjoy the routine, the security; the pride that comes with following an instruction manual, to get the job done well. If so, more power to you.
