NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE (Remuneration policy for academic staff)

Mr Zainudin Nordin asked the Minister for Education (a) whether the National University of Singapore (NUS) will be changing its remuneration policy to that of paying their academic staff for a period of nine months so as to allow them to provide consultancy services for the other three months of the year; (b) whether there is sufficient infrastructure available for such consultancy work to be made available for NUS staff; (c) how will it affect the morale of staff in NUS who are not able to secure consultancy work due to the nature of their disciplines; and (d) how will this affect the quality of teaching in NUS.

RAdm Teo Chee Hean: Mr Speaker, Sir, the National University of Singapore has set up a task force to review its tenure and compensation system. This review is motivated by the university's intent to recruit and retain talented local and overseas faculty. The task force will be looking at how to provide NUS faculty with more flexibility to take advantage of opportunities to engage in external activities.

One of the ideas explored by the task force is the new remuneration package, as cited by the Member. The taskforce has been meeting with faculty members to gather feedback. It will continue to do so till July 2003. It will then submit its report and recommendations, incorporating the inputs of the NUS community, to NUS' management for consideration.