Tuition Obsession: A Singaporean Dysfunction

Singapore is in some ways, a deeply dysfunctional society. You know so when you read mind-blowing headlines like this:

Parent pays nearly $6,000 a month in tuition fees

Maureen Koh | The New Paper | Tue Mar 6 2012

Her son is a straight A student in a top boys' school here yet this mother spends $5,800 a month on his tuition.

Her son, who is in Secondary 3, attends classes for English and mathematics at a premier tuition centre in Thomson once a week - two hours per session.

He also takes a 2 1/2-hour weekly Chinese class in a popular language school.

And he gets one-on-one tuition - each for about two hours - for physics, chemistry and biology with a private tutor.

All these classes are on top of the regular supplementary lessons that his school gives.

...To top it off, she pays people to do her son's homework when he can't cope with the combination of school and tuition assignments.

She pays $200 per hour if they have to swing by before midnight and $250 an hour when its later.

Maybe Pole Dancing Isn't So Bad After All...!!

When the news first broke that a stripper from Sydney would be choreographing the opening pole dancing act of the Youth Olympic Games, there was a major uproar from the online community. Some slammed the inappropriateness of pole dancing for a global youth sporting event, because of its association with sleazy strip clubs. Meanwhile, more open-minded commentators noted that pole dancing was a competitive sport in and of itself and did not necessarily have to be associated with the sex industry.

The recent economic crisis emerging from the United States, however, could put the skill of pole-dancing in a positive light for young girls in Singapore. Consider the following news article:

Stripper Finds Degree Profitable for Goldman Wasn't Worth It
By John Hechinger - Aug 6, 2010

Carrianne Howard dreamed of designing video games, so she enrolled in a program at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, a for-profit college part-owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Her bachelor’s degree in game art and design cost $70,000 in tuition and fees. After she graduated in December 2007, she found a job that paid $12 an hour recruiting employees for video game companies. She lost that job a year later when her department was shuttered.

These days, Howard, 26, makes her living in a way that doesn’t require a college diploma: by stripping at the Lido Cabaret, a topless club in Cocoa Beach, Florida. “I didn’t know what else to do,” she says. “I’ve got a worthless degree. It’s like I didn’t attend school at all.”