I was the last of the tour group to board the train to Pyongyang at Sinuiju, and all the cabins were full, except for a cabin of mostly middle-aged Chinese men. Across from my seat was my Chinese roommate for the tour, a college student from Anhui. As I sat down, my fellow passengers were pointing at one of the guides, the fair lady in a yellow hanbok who never smiled. 朝鲜美女 (trans. Joseon beauty), they laughed, come and join us. If she had heard them, she pretended not to.

As the train rolled its way through North Pyong’an, I noticed ragged children sleeping in a shady spot by the train tracks. Even the cows in the fields looked skinny.

(Yanggakdo hotel lobby, Pyongyang) I guess they know where the credit comes from…

One morning, while my roommate was in the shower, I turned on the television in our hotel room, reminded of Orwell’s telescreen. The morning news show I saw was just like the novel’s description of perpetual war news. Big, black bold comic-book-style headlines superimposed over scenes of crisis and famine. It was as if the world outside was all gloom and doom. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

As I waited in the hotel lobby for the tour group to gather from breakfast, I saw a group of catholic nuns in traditional habits. Among them was an old man in a grey robe with a long, white beard. For some reason, he reminded me of Uncle Ho.

(Kaesong city)

We stopped for lunch in Kaesong city on our way back to Pyongyang from the DMZ. It was a restaurant for tourists, and they had souvenirs and gifts for sale with prices listed in euros. I saw bottles of Ryongtongsul soju across the counter, and asked about them. 8 RMB each. I tried to buy more than two bottles, as gifts for my friends in Beijing, but they wouldn’t sell them to me. Some kind of socialist rationing system, perhaps.

The other tourists were attempting to bargain down the prices of some kind of medicinal herb tonic, which took a long while as our guides translated the back and forth of negotiations. So much for central planner set prices. I stepped outside for some air, onto the wide streets of Kaesong city. It was eerily quiet, without the typical hum of urban activity. As I looked up into the nearby apartments, trying to see how the inhabitants lived, I heard the soft tones of piano keys playing an unfamiliar melody, and wondered if there was Chopin here, or Rachmaninov.

On the remaining drive, the guides sang karaoke for us. We passed by an old woman, her back bent under a bundle of sticks. She looked like she had carried these loads of firewood for a lifetime.

(Pyongyang) They must subscribe to the broken window fallacy here. Except the windows don’t get replaced.

One of our early stops was at the ‘international friendship’ museum at Mohyangsan, where gifts to either elder or younger Kim from around the world were displayed, some of which were quite strange, like an alligator holding a serving tray (Nicaragua). Apart from the Soviet bloc countries, there were some unexpected names there: Billy Graham, various US-based groups I had never heard of before, like the ‘World Council of Democratic Youth’. Gifts from chaebols, and companies based in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

At the start of the route was a board listing each country from which gifts had been sent, and how many gifts there were. What interested me the most were 2 gifts originating from Singapore, and although I kept my eyes peeled for them, I could only found one. It was from a ‘Sunko company’. Having seen a gift from Suharto, right next to another from Sukarno earlier, I wondered if the second gift had been from one of our heads of government. After all, they are not so dissimilar.

On our route, we crossed the paths of local tours several times, and they seemed just as curious about us as we were about them. They looked like ordinary people from the rural provinces, wearing plain grey or navy shirts adorned only by little red pins. Very few of the men were taller than I am, and I’m pretty small. Men and women alike had faces weathered and tanned, like they spent all their days toiling in the fields under the hot sun. Not at all like the tall, fair-skinned folk of soap operas, whom my Chinese roommate’s cousin resembled more. She went everywhere on the tour in a wide-brimmed hat, sunglasses that covered half her face, and a white parasol.

Ginseng wine loosens lips that could sink ships.

Our, or rather my English-language guide, could only speak to two of the tour participants. Myself, and roommate. Armed with my prepared list of ‘safe’ questions and conversation topics, I started with a question about the guide. (People usually love to talk about themselves) Did he have a wife or a girlfriend? He laughed and said that he did not. I then asked when men and women typically marry. Around 30 for men, 25 for women, which I suspected was an urban number. The age of consent is 18, though kids typically start dating secretly while in school at 14 or 15. I replied that it was about the same as Singapore. And then my Chinese roommate asked about whether a hypothetical foreigner (i.e. himself) could marry a local girl.

That was the point the cultural sensitivity alarm bells went off in my head, about the historical relationship between the Korean kingdoms and imperial China, modern issues of cross-border bride trafficking and stories of forced abortions of pregnant repatriates. I hadn’t read Brian Myers’ The Cleanest Race at the time, but I already had some idea about the xenophobic racial purity ideology. And here was a dude from a ‘tributary state’, asking an elite university student thoroughly steeped in regime propaganda, about stealing away a pure Joseon maiden. This could not end well.

The guide’s eyebrows narrowed. His smile disappeared. No. It is not allowed. I quickly changed the subject to sports and movies. Apparently ‘Titanic’ is popular.

A brief aside: At Myers’ book talk at Columbia a few weeks ago, I asked how the racial purity ideology could be reconciled with an overwhelming economic reliance on China. His answer: It cannot, which is why that reliance is downplayed. I didn’t find this answer satisfactory – how effectively is it downplayed?

(Juche tower, Pyongyang) Salarymen and OLs are Workers too!

We arrived at the Juche tower near sunset. In front of the statue of the worker, peasant, and ‘socialist intellectual’, hundreds of people marched in formation, raising metal rods in the air as they said 만세 (manse, equivalent to banzai 萬歳 or wansui 万岁). I use the term ‘march’ loosely, as they seemed less than enthusiastic about whatever it was they were supposed to be celebrating. Probably something related to Juche.

The only people that were really into it were the ones in front of the formations shouting into megaphones. The rest of them looked like regular people who, after a long day at work, had to spend their evenings on Workers Party duties. One of the tourists, a middle-aged teacher from Shanghai, walked up to the back of the line and joined in. She probably had more fun than any of the real participants. I would have joined in too, had I not been busy snapping pictures, until one of the megaphone-wielding comrade commissars spotted me and cried foul. Fortunately, the guides intervened, and I was spared and survived to write this diary entry.

(Juche tower, Pyongyang) Sunset of the Workers Party?

Previously on Pyongyang Diaries: The Guides

My final semester, in full quant gear. It’s time to man up and math up. If I have to get out of school, I’m going out with a bang, not a whimper.

Required:

POLS C3998x-C3999y Senior Honors Seminar. A two-term seminar for students writing the senior honors thesis.

The thing I worry about the most, all the time. I live in perpetual thesis anxiety. Chris Blattman was right, only commit yourself to writing a thesis if you truly must.

ECON W4921 Political Economy Seminar: The Non-Market Business Environment. The course will apply the lessons of political economy to study the non-market environment within which businesses operate. Topics include lobbying, regulation, media relations, and international trade.

My last required class for the joint major, and it looks like it’ll be fun. Maybe I can get a lobbyist job out of this.

HUMA W1123 Masterpieces of Western music. The course attempts to involve students actively in the process of critical listening, both in the classroom and in concerts that the students attend and write about. The extraordinary richness of musical life in New York is thus an integral part of the course. Although not a history of Western music, the course is taught in a chronological format and includes masterpieces by Josquin des Prez, Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, among others. Since 2004, the works of jazz composers and improvisers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, have been added to the list of masterpieces to be studied in this class.

My last required class for the Columbia core. One of the fun parts of the class is attending an opera, which I almost always enjoy.

Electives:

POLS W4292 Advanced Topics in Quantitative Research: Models for Panel & Time-Series Cross-Section Data 3 pts. This course covers methods for models for repeated observations data. These kinds of data represent tremendous opportunities as well as formidable challenges for making inferences. The course will focus on how to estimate models for panel and time-series cross-section data. Topics covered include fixed effects, random effects, dynamic panel models, random coefficient models, and models for qualitative dependent variables.

With this, I will have completed the entire polisci graduate methods sequence, well, except the basic classes like the ‘math camp’. The equivalent class in the stat department does not seem to be as focused on social science applications, and I’m not sure if I would ever use Fourier transformations or spectral density estimation in my own research (or any finance quant job), so this one seems more appropriate.

MATH W4061 Introduction To Modern Analysis I 3 pts. Real numbers, metric spaces, elements of general topology. Continuous and differential functions. Implicit functions. Integration; change of variables. Function spaces.

MATH V2500x or y Analysis and Optimization 3 pts. Mathematical methods for economics. Quadratic forms, Hessian, implicit functions. Convex sets, convex functions. Optimization, constrained optimization, Kuhn-Tucker conditions. Elements of the calculus of variations and optimal control. (SC)

Last year’s valedictorian, the god of econ, advised me to take 4061 “and ace it”, if I ever wanted to go to econ grad school. Having given up on ever getting into a good econ program, I’m not sure if I really need to take this, especially since I don’t expect to do much formal modeling, though it seems like some people recommend real/functional analysis anyway, as a kind of mental abstraction jujitsu.

After attending the first class, seeing all the math and physics majors there, and struggling with the first ‘Baby Rudin’ homework, I despaired and dropped down to the easier ‘math for econ’ analysis class, that covers only the subset of real analysis most relevant to econ applications, which will probably help motivate me to stick with it.

There is a graceless human tendency to wish upon others the ills visited upon oneself. Instead of pointing successors towards short cuts, you relish seeing them clambering through identical hoops.

The author of this particularly insightful observation was describing her experience advising a prospective journalist. She was asked for advice about how to write a book about Africa in a thoughtless way that was not conducive to actually receiving the desired information (it provoked the sentiments quoted), but she offered some very different and still valuable wisdom. In other words, the person got what they needed, but not what they wanted to hear. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that her wisdom was ignored by the intended recipient.

Sometimes people ask me for advice, and sometimes I offer my advice unsolicited, and in both cases I am usually glad to help and share what I know. But what people want to hear is usually quite different from what they need to hear. On one hand, telling people what they need to hear will probably mean being ignored or disliked, which is counterproductive to helping them. On the other hand, telling people only what they want to hear is not going to help them either, and may end up making me look like an unreliable source of advice too. I try to strike a balance and offer both types of advice, but it occurs to me that it may be better to perfect the art of disguising one as the other. It’s not easy, but I want to try my best to sweeten the bitter medicine of truth.

Most times I get asked about college admissions and applications. I am happy to share whatever I know, though in all honesty, I don’t have much insight into the internal dynamics of admissions processes (only admissions committee members would), at least no more than any conscientious research would uncover. Nor am I well suited to questions about comparisons between universities, only having attended one, and everyone’s mileage varies. But while I may not know the right answers about college admissions, I do know what the right questions to ask are. Here are two recent ones:

1. An acquaintance from my travels who I had helped with graduate scholarship applications earlier (unsuccessfully) was still pursuing her goal of working in the development/aid industry and continued to apply to graduate school. This time, she wanted advice on whether to attend a particular masters program in the EU, which I was unfamiliar with. To answer her questions, I suggested some topics (placement, funding etc) for her to ask the department about. But I also felt that what she needed to hear was whether or not attending this program, or any graduate program, made sense with her career goals, and advised her to rethink it. She wasn’t too keen on that, perhaps because she didn’t have very clear career goals, and eventually decided to attend, despite the lack of funding and a placement history that may not have been a good fit.

2. Another friend was considering applying to LKYSPP and asked me how competitive it was (I have no idea). I gave him my (uninformed) opinions on the program, the usual questions (placement history etc) to ask the school about, and some general information about living in Singapore. However, I thought what he needed to hear about was whether LKYSPP or any other program was the best way to get where he wanted to be, and advised him to consider other alternatives. He didn’t seem to want to discuss that, so I did not press the issue.

In both cases, they had effectively made up their minds beforehand, and my answer was mainly to confirm what had already been decided upon. I was glad to help them with their specific questions, but sad that I failed to also tell them what they needed to hear: that what is on the table may not be in their real interests.

For a long time I’ve considered getting what I want to hear the main problem. Finding the right adviser, asking the right questions in the right way. But the real problem may be about being open to the right advice when it comes my way. How to obtain the job I ‘want’ presently may be secondary to what I would find meaningful and fulfilling over the long term. The latter is a far more difficult problem to solve, and more in need of good advice.

An upperclassman working at an MBB consulting firm told me that it hadn’t been his ideal choice to take up the offer, but it was a highly practical one compared to what he really wanted to do, which he is putting off for one or two years. When I suggested that he should count his blessings, given that I don’t expect to even have an offer to consider taking, he replied, “It’s easy to just take any job, it’s easy to apply for what’s available. Waiting for something that you really want, that’s hard.”

Sometimes I need to remind myself to listen to what God is telling me, even if it’s not what I want to hear.

Dear qui tacet:

Thank you for your interest in Boutique Consulting Firm.

After reviewing your qualifications and our present requirements, we regret that we will not be pursuing your application further at this time. Our decision only reflects an attempt to match the talents of prospective employees with our current openings.

Your resume will be placed in our active file and we will certainly contact you should a suitable position develop.

We appreciate your interest in Boutique Consulting Firm, and wish you success in future job endeavors.

Regards,
Boutique Consulting Firm

Replies to this message are undeliverable and will not reach the Recruiting Team. Please do not reply. (my emphasis)

Was it really necessary to add that last line? Including it just looks mean, and turns off more people than excluding it would have (i.e. some disgruntled applicant that wrote a lengthy reply and got it bounced back).

Here’s a nice one from Google:

Dear qui tacet,

We enjoyed reviewing your application and greatly appreciate the time you spent applying to the Google Start Program. Due to the overwhelming response and limited amount of positions, we will unfortunately not be moving forward with your application at this time.

Here are some tips to help build your resume:

* Don’t settle for the status quo. Seek challenges, take smart risks, innovate.

* Exhibit leadership. Demonstrate your ability to influence and make an impact. Highlight how you have taken initiative and ownership of your results.

* Explore opportunities that enhance your overall background and experience. Demonstrate excellence beyond the classroom and feature activities and skills that make you unique.

For more tips, please visit www.google.com/jobs/students and click on “Getting into Google” on the left pane.

If you have any questions, please email students@google.com. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

~The University Programs Team

To be sure, it’s a form letter, but that’s well hidden by the generally positive tone. Moral of the story: If you have to say no, at least say it nicely, and those who know this are probably going to be more successful.

The penultimate semester of my undergrad days. Minimum number of classes, maximum attention to each.

POLS C3998x-C3999y Senior Honors Seminar. The Senior Honors Seminar is designed to help students majoring in political science write a full-length, scholarly paper that is of comparable quality to published work in the field. These papers, or theses, may also qualify the author for an Honors degree.

So I’m in the polisci thesis writing seminar. I wish I had planned this way in advance so I could have used the summer to gather field research (and got a grant to do so). Oh well.

POLS W4291x Advanced Topics in Quantitative Research. This course covers methods for empirical models that have dependent variables that are not continuous. These models include dichotomous and polychotomous response models, models for censored and truncated data, sample selection models, duration models, and models for count data.

Was advised that this was a good econometric methods class for my polisci thesis since it’s likely I’ll have lots of dummy DVs. As far as I can tell I am the only undergrad again. At the first class, one of the phd kids asked me why I had finished the 2nd year requirements before even starting. My answer: teching up, so in the likely event that I do not get into a good program, I can find some kind of quant RA job. Truth is, I’m probably still behind the top econ undergrads in technical skills, especially those kids who did the advanced time-series class.

POLS W3952y Seminar in Comparative Politics. Varieties of Capitalism. This course provides a theoretical framework for understanding the variation in economic and social institutions among advanced capitalist economies. Can we meaningfully talk of the German or Swedish model and, if so, what are their distinctive characteristics? In what ways do these economies differ from liberal market economies, such as the United States or the United Kingdom? Do these cross-national differences persist in the face of increased economic integration and globalization? We will explore these questions by examining institutional and policy differences in the following areas: (a) training and skill formation; (b) financial institutions and corporate governance, (c) the welfare state, (d) systems of industrial relations.

Was advised that this was another good class for my thesis. Although its mostly advanced economies, I’ll pick up more cross-country techniques that could be applied.

PHED C1001x Fencing.

Columbia actually requires me to take a PE class to graduate, so I picked something to fulfill my action-adventure fantasies. Even though its unlikely that I’ll become a master swordsman by end of term. At the first class, our instructor told us stories about fencing during the cold war and how it was seen as a ‘bourgeois’ activity until they realized it was a good source of Olympic medals.

Non-class activities: RA job, GRE prep, language study, apps, job hunting

Congratulations! In the face of a very difficult selection process, one of your photos was selected to be included in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia University’s Photography Society’s upcoming exhibition. This is a strong testimony to your talent, as we received over 130 photos submitted and had room for only 25. The jury was very impressed by your work and looks forward to including it in the exhibition.

The photo the jury selected is “Sewing and Reaping.”

The Opening Reception for Views In: Undergraduates Photograph a Year in East and Southeast Asia will be on Tuesday, October 13 from 5-7PM. The location is the exhibition space itself, on the 4th floor mezzanine of the International Affairs Building. I hope that those of you in New York will be able to attend and bring your friends (and family if possible)! I expect to have postcard invitations for the exhibition and opening reception by the end of the week.

Yes, I know the title wasn’t very creative.

While I’m glad they picked this one to showcase, I was quite surprised that my other submissions were not taken, especially my North Korea portfolio – some of which I thought were also visually striking. Perhaps it was too ‘current’. At least this one will make it to the 4th floor of SIPA. Hopefully it will get placed on the corridor outside the main auditorium, where the most traffic is.

The short blurb I came up with:
“Balinyouqi, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, PRC. Mrs. Zheng is a client of the Chifeng Zhaowuda Women’s Sustainable Development Association (赤峰市昭乌达妇女可持续发展协会), a local microfinance institution I visited with Wokai Microfinance. After her husband was laid off from a state-owned construction enterprise, she became the family’s primary breadwinner. She used her first loan to upgrade her pedal-operated sewing machine to an electric one, increasing her productivity, and employ other women in her tailoring business, creating jobs and training others in her trade.”

Unfortunately they didn’t give me a lot of space to tell her whole story, so I had to condense it to the bare essentials like who, what, where, emphasizing how she overcame difficulties with support for investment (or maybe consumption smoothing), and how to help others like her. Hopefully Wokai and its clients will get a little more attention through my efforts.

Congratulations! I’m happy to say that we’ve finished reading through all 1500+ applications, and your name has come out on top. You should all be extremely proud of your accomplishment, as this was the most competitive year in Business Today conference history (our acceptance rate was even lower than that of Princeton itself)!

You come from over 20 countries and 100 colleges; You speak more than 50 languages, you’ve started your own businesses, you’ve won international awards, and you are all around world-class students. It didn’t take me long to realize that I wouldn’t have been accepted to my own conference.

This will be my third time at Business Today, and I’m looking forward to seeing old friends again. I wish that more of my friends from GIS had been accepted, though. Some of them are far more accomplished than I. Unfortunately, I suspect the selectivity of the program rises proportionally with the cost of flying the candidate over, and for me that’s a $2.25 subway ride.

Those of my readers from Singapore or familiar with its customs should be aware of a particular social institution known as, among other similar names, the ‘government scholarship’. However, this term is highly misleading, not only to foreign observers but also many Singaporeans, as the institution has only a passing resemblance to what the rest of the world understands the term ‘scholarship’ to mean. Here I propose a different name.

First note that the first part of its name is accurate. The ‘government scholarship’ is administered by several branches of the state bureaucracy, that is, the various ministries, the subministerial agencies (known as ‘statutory boards’, a peculiar term I have not found elsewhere), and the state-owned enterprises, by which I include the so-called ‘government-linked companies’ i.e. firms partly owned by the state investment vehicle, Temasek Holdings, or its subsidiaries. Some of which were originally subministerial agencies subsequently ‘privatized’, some of which were originally ‘private’, insofar as a large local firm can be said to be private. Which large local firms are private in the sense of being independent from the state I leave as an exercise for the reader. Those thus considered private which may offer a similar ‘scholarship’ only do so to compete with the state’s recruitment practices. My point here is that the social institution is primarily the domain of the state, and it is generally funded directly or indirectly with taxpayer money. There is an entire branch of the state whose sole function is to administer it.

Since the agencies that offer this ‘scholarship’ are numerous and go by many names, and the precise terms and conditions offered by each will vary, I will offer a generic description that should apply to most cases. Typically, prospective candidates apply shortly after the release of the A-level examination results to their organization of choice. Those selected sign a contract to work for the respective agency for a period of four to six years after graduation. The contract stipulates that the agency will cover full undergraduate tuition fees and related expenses at most universities around the world. Some will even cover graduate school.

The actual amount payable depends on which university the agency has decided the prospective candidate will attend. Some are offered coverage at universities abroad (e.g. ‘overseas merit scholarship’) and some at the local public universities (e.g. ‘local study award’). If the terms are acceptable, the contract is signed, and the new hire proceeds to university. For male citizen hires, some state agencies (the ministries) facilitate a deferment of conscription to after graduation, and include the term of military service within the service obligation. For male non-citizens, the contract includes acquiring citizenship and serving the draft first.*

Sound like a good deal? It does to many, and many apply. Thus the selection process must begin with a screening phase, to reduce the number of applications to a manageable level. This screening mechanism is academic merit, that is, A-level results. Those that make the first cut are called for interviews to assess their personal characteristics. Final offers are made to those candidates perceived most suitable for employment, and conversely, accepted by candidates with preferences for a career with that agency, with all its contractual benefits, relative to all other possible careers.

As the primary criteria for being a ‘government scholar’ is not academic merit or personal achievement but career preference, I believe the term ‘scholarship’ is inappropriate. It more closely resembles a practice in recruitment known as the signing bonus, and is better understood as such.

Signing bonuses are typically part of recruitment strategies where firms competing for new hires, but their compensation packages do not differ very much. The signing bonus, a one-time payment, provides an additional incentive for the candidate to choose firm X over firms Y and Z, which could be the make or break factor if everything else is similar. A one-time payment is much easier and less of a risk than raising the offered wages (due to wage stickiness) and benefits, or improving the working conditions, company culture etc.

Similarly, the ‘government scholarship’ is a signing bonus. Since government compensation packages are more heavily weighted on benefits than wages, and the culture and internal practices of a large bureaucracy are usually harder to change, this is the easiest way to incentivize candidates to choose the civil service over all other possible employers in the world. For the scholars pursuing their undergraduate degrees in the US, it’s a ~200,000 USD taxpayer-funded signing bonus paid out over four years before the first day at work. In comparison, the typical signing bonus for entry-level investment bankers was about 10,000 USD during the good years.

Whether such large signing bonuses are a sound use of taxpayer money is beyond the scope of this post, and I leave it as an exercise for the reader. Many others have written extensively on the benefits and harms of this social institution, and I will discuss my perspectives on those at some other time.

Stop calling it a scholarship! Now that I have divined its true name, my hope is that people will start using it, and that when they do they will notice the absence of anything resembling a real scholarship in Singapore, that is, one awarded purely on merit alone, or on financial need – see my previous post on means-testing.

In the interests of full disclosure, I did apply to a few agencies with my peers, and being a slow kid did not even make it to the interview phase. As you can tell, I’m still pretty slow.

Update: Mo-ha-med asks about the up-front military service requirement for male non-citizens. This may seem like a horribly unattractive deal, but it is not intended for foreigners who would otherwise have no obligation to Singapore, but male 2nd generation permanent residents born and raised on the island, who would have the same military service liability as natural born citizens.

Having them serve the draft up front, instead of the usual practice of deferring scholar draft terms to after graduation, is 1) due to the perception that male 2GPRs have a lower ‘loyalty/patriotism/no alternative’ threshold to well, dodging the draft and ‘running off with the money’, than natural born citizens do (I don’t know if this perception is justified), and 2) to assuage popular grouses that non-citizens get all the benefits of residency without paying in as much (this perception being somewhat justified).

Does the up-front service clause dissuade male 2GPRs? Probably not, they would have had to serve it out anyway, and a 200,000 USD signing bonus may well be worth the delayed suffering foregone. Anecdotally, I know several male 2GPRs who signed up.

Two years ago around this time, shortly after my stint at a DC think-tank and a public policy summer camp, I wrote my first op-ed on higher education subsidies in Singapore, and it got some attention from legislators and published in the state media.

The subsidy, the Tuition Grant Scheme administered by the education ministry, is not means-tested and subsidy amounts depend on the specific university and field of study, and is fairly substantial – as much as 75% of full tuition. It is also tied not to citizenship or residency (as is common elsewhere) but to attendance at certain schools in Singapore, namely the local public universities and the vocational and trade schools (the polytechnics and other diploma providers). I use the term public because all of them also receive operating subsidies via the education ministry. Anyone who attends these schools is eligible for the subsidy – rich or poor, citizen or foreign national – but these schools only. I am primarily concerned with its provision at the undergraduate level though in principle my arguments extend also to the vocational and trade schools.*

*While not too familiar with the vocational schools, I understand that the p.a. subsidy can be as much as 85% of full fees, though the shorter duration of vocational schooling means that the total subsidy per student is lower than in the universities. While the same arguments for means-testing apply, my guess is that with the income distribution in vocational schools almost all their students would be eligible for some level of means-tested subsidy.

What’s new?
Two years on, not much has changed. Subsidies have been extended to certain programs at one more school, UniSIM/SIM University, a continuing education provider, but the amounts are not as extensive (40%) and limited to the domestically accredited programs, arguably not their historical core competence.* More generally, residents and foreign nationals now receive a lower amount of subsidy though the amount is still fairly substantial.** While I am tempted to claim some credit for making this happen, subsidies are still not available for students who choose to study at any other university course in Singapore or elsewhere.

*UnISIM was previously the Singapore Institute of Management, primarily a local distributor of distance courses, first from the Open University and later a number of distance programs from the US/UK/AUS. The rebranded name reflects the wider breadth of programs on offer and also distinguishes the (now subsidized) domestic-accredited programs from the foreign-accredited distance courses. More about this later.

**Excluding residents and foreign nationals from subsidies was never my intent! My original op-ed makes that clear. Pointing out that they received subsidies too was merely to demonstrate how unfair the (not means-tested) policy was then, and still is now. I hope that the subsidies withdrawn from foreign nationals will be replaced with an equivalent amount of merit-based scholarships for them.

I proposed two changes in subsidy policy. First, to means-test the subsidy. Second, to make Singapore citizens eligible wherever they choose to enroll and whatever they choose to study. The two are closely related, because (I suspect) lower SES students are more likely to enroll in the less competitive local private schools and thus miss out on subsidies altogether.* But I will discuss the first component of my proposal, because it is the less contested one.

*My guess here is that lower SES students tend to pursue vocational schooling instead of the academic track (A-levels, then university), not because they don’t make the grade for the academic track (at least not only because), but as a choice to enter the workforce faster and with lower fees paid up front. Case 1: They then hit some kind of glass ceiling (real or perceived) on diploma holders sometime after entering the workforce, perhaps in the transition to managerial roles or in the kinds of professions and industries available. For example, the ceiling between paralegal and barrister/solicitor for those who took a legal studies diploma course. To attempt to break through the ceiling they opt for part-time continuing education, which until now wasn’t subsidized. Even now that it is (at UniSIM), the total costs incurred of vocational schooling and continuing education will be greater relative to the academic track. Case 2: If they anticipate this problem, vocational students will then opt to attend (the subsidized) local universities instead of entering the workforce directly, where they will enjoy advanced standing, but I haven’t seen detailed data on how many actually do so. My impression is that a good proportion of those who opt for this circuitous route will get crowded out by the academic track cohort, and go elsewhere (i.e. AUS) paying full fees. If either case is true, then our current subsidy policy is regressive.

Means-testing
A means-tested undergraduate tuition subsidy would give eligible students a subsidy whose amount would depend only on the individual’s financial need. It could range from a small discount to a full ride plus stipend. Let’s assume away the second part of my proposal, ie. assume that the status quo of preferential treatment for the local public universities prevails.

Apart from the local public universities, those whose interests are harmed by a means-tested tuition subsidy are those students with the means to pay. This is the Singapore upper-middle class and above. The median household earned income was 46320 SGD per annum in 2005. (Mean is 65400 SGD but median is more appropriate because of the fat tails in the distribution). I will demonstrate below that the full p.a. cost of undergraduate tuition is about 75% of this annual median income, so only upper-middle class and above households should be means-tested out.

How much does it cost to attend a local public university?
Let us first consider the cost to Singapore citizens, since they make up the majority of students at the local universities. Residents and foreign nationals pay 10% and 50% more respectively, and those of you interested can mentally adjust accordingly. I will focus on tuition fees at Singapore National. Comparable tuition fees at Nanyang Tech and Singapore Management are about the same.

The heavily subsidized tuition fees for most disciplines at NUS are fairly similar, the major outliers being medicine and dentistry*. It’s about 7K SGD p.a. or 15% of the median household income . But if we look at the full unsubsidized amounts, we see that engineering/science is more expensive, and so is music. There’s a lot of variation in the current subsidy amount based on discipline. For example, some taxpayers may wish to know why music is subsidized twice as much as law. But those questions are beyond the scope of my present inquiry.

*The unsubsidized fees for medicine and dentistry are 100K SGD p.a., for six and four years respectively, which probably reflect the cost of education and the earnings potential afterwards. Whether these fields deserve an additional subsidy over and above the means-tested grant is also beyond the scope of my present inquiry. It would depend on many things including labor force requirements in the healthcare sector, etc.

Excluding the outliers music, medicine and dentistry, we see that the unsubsidized tuition fees at NUS range from 26-33K SGD p.a.. There are some additional university-specific fees (NUS ‘modules’?) and I welcome comments on how much these amount to. Living expenses are harder to compute an average for since most Singapore citizens who attend local schools live at home, and this varies a lot from household to household.

How much does it cost to go elsewhere?
The appropriate comparison of costs when deciding whether or not to go overseas, is to compare total costs of attendance. However, since I can’t readily compute university-specific averages and living expenses when student live at home, here I compare tuition fees alone. Readers can make the mental adjustment to factor in other expenses, cost of living etc.

Australia. Undergraduate tuition fees at UNSW Sydney for foreign students in comparable disciplines range from 20-26k AUD = 23-30K SGD. Note that UNSW Asia charged 26-29K SGD p.a.
UK. Tuition fees at Cambridge for non-EU/UK nationals for non-clinical studies range from £10-13k = 23-30K SGD.
US. Undergraduate tuition at Harvard is $33,696 USD p.a. = 48546 SGD. (I assume that upper-middle class Singapore citizens will generally not qualify for financial aid).

Do note that living expenses can vary substantially, and that cost is not the only criteria relevant to decision-making (value is). I welcome comments from readers about whether the fees listed above are representative. Now that we know the cost of going elsewhere, what can we expect to happen if subsidies are means-tested?

Expected Effects
First consider those excluded by means-testing, the students who can afford to pay full fees. There are 3 possible categories thereof:

1. Those who choose to attend local universities. The money saved on subsidizing them goes to other uses, like improving our universities teaching, no-strings merit scholarships etc.
2. Those who choose to go elsewhere, because they do not consider local universities worth the full cost relative to alternative options.
3. Those who forego university altogether and opt for vocational education, direct entry to workforce, or NEET status.

Since I believe the 3rd group to be a null set, the 2nd group will determine the changes caused in enrolment in the local universities. How large it is will depend on the current income distribution in the local universities, and the perceived relative value of a local university education.

I welcome readers’ comments on the former. I suspect the majority of students at our local universities can afford full fees, since SES strongly correlates with academic achievement, but I haven’t found a breakdown of students at NUS/NTU/SMU by household income. That would be pretty interesting to see, especially a year-by-year breakdown by discipline. It would be really useful for estimating the causal impact of particular majors.

As for the latter, I can’t comment on since I don’t attend a local university, except to note that they will have to compete harder to attract and retain the 2nd group under means-testing, and that the incentive structure under competition tends to raise quality and customer satisfaction for everyone. With the caveat in the picture above.

As Charles Murray notes, assessing the value of a bachelor’s degree is pretty difficult. I would also like to see a greater focus on objective measures of quality of education (such as detailed career placement statistics) rather than the usual methodologically-murky international rankings. For example, Singapore Management could import another practice from their model school, the on-campus recruitment survey. We can’t improve quality without measuring it, and we need to measure the right thing. Competition only improves quality if customers can measure quality effectively, and fact is, a lot of parents and students out there are pretty clueless about the value of degrees. These academic ‘rankings’ are so irrelevant, whereas I think students will care more about future earnings projections. This is where the state can come in, in requiring all the schools that receive operating and tuition subsidies through the education ministry to comply with a simple transparency initiative to publish their placement records.

Why don’t we have a means-tested system yet?
Entrenched interests, policy inertia and upper-middle class sense of entitlement aside, means-testing is difficult to implement. As my friend Ringisei notes:

Household income. I suppose this will be income tax data but this is notoriously inaccurate as IRAS does not tax income accruing from foreign sources. This has applied very much to the business community here – those whose businesses extend beyond Singapore. And increasingly applies to many professionals who get posted to KL, Beijing/Shanghai, Jakarta, Bangkok etc and have their salaries paid out of there instead of Singapore. Which is why the government tends to prefer using the annual value of a person/household’s primary residence as the proxy measure of income/wealth – but that, as you well know, presents its own set of problems.

Difficult but not impossible. We already means-test healthcare, housing, and various cash handouts. No reason why we can’t means-test university tuition either.

Extending Subsidies
Let’s now consider the second component of my proposal, making the means-tested subsidy available to Singapore citizens wherever they choose to enroll and whatever they choose to study.

From the list of education providers in Singapore, you can tell that the vast majority ineligible for the subsidy are local distributors of foreign-accredited distance courses, much like UniSIM’s parent business model. Many of these programs tend to be in continuing education. There are also the local satellites of foreign universities, though they tend to be smaller in scale unlike the late UNSW Asia.

Recall subsidies are limited to UniSIM’s domestic-accredited programs, but not its foreign-accredited ones. This recent policy suggests the reason why subsidies are limited to local public schools. My interpretation is this: It is the industrial policy of the state to support domestic brands, and not domestic firms per se. The firm itself (UniSIM) may be based locally, owned by locals, fully staffed by locals, and the services provided primarily to locals, but because the product on offer is essentially foreign (accreditation from Open University et al) it is therefore not in the interest of the state to promote it.

I don’t agree with this because I do believe it is in the interest of the state to make the playing field level, so that new entrants have a fair chance against incumbents, who have to compete harder for customers. A lot of you have told me that you have no desire to subsidize degree mills and predators on less-savvy paper-hungry students. Neither do I. But the current population of private providers in the education market isn’t representative of what we would expect in a competitive one. The state has crowded out everyone who isn’t low-cost. How could UNSW Asia compete for students who can go to NUS for a quarter of the price? It couldn’t.

Singapore Management is a good example of why it makes sense to welcome foreign competition. SMU is basically a Wharton replicate, from the curriculum to the joint programs to the scholarship modeled on IS&B to the pervasive investment banking / management consulting culture. That was its main selling point back when it first got started – a brand-name foreign-style education available locally. SMU students were eligible for subsidies from the beginning. But nobody thinks that subsidizing SMU diluted the Singapore brand. If anything, it made Singapore a more attractive place to go to school, and gave students more choices. It might’ve also motivated NUS and NTU’s business programs to improve.

However, the degree of competition unleashed by extending subsidies to all undergraduate programs in Singapore will always be limited by the fact that starting a new (comprehensive) university in Singapore, even with subsidies from the state, is a massive endeavor fraught with risk, and the market cannot support an infinite number of players. It also takes years to establish one – the fourth public university is now under construction, and nobody knows if it will succeed or not. Competitive forces will have a glacial pace. But there are hundreds of universities abroad that our local players might compete with, and if citizens eligible for the means-tested subsidy could take it anywhere they chose to go, competition will be that much more perfect.

They were the first to greet us at Sinuiju. That is, after the KPA soldiers had inspected our documents, presented by the mainland tour guide. It was a printout of tour passengers, with our passport-size portrait photographs pasted on adjacent to our profiles. The border guard who came onto the Dandong-Sinuiju train cabin only asked for it after seeing my passport cover of a different shade of red, which after glancing through, was satisfied. I wondered if the reason for his increased vigilance was that mainland Chinese were considered less of a security risk, and that I would have normally required a more intensive background check.

(Pyongyang subway) Notice the red pins. I wonder what happens if you forget to put it on in the morning.

Because of this delay, I got off the train last of all, and on the other side of the platform waiting by the Sinuiju-Pyongyang cabin car were two figures, one lady in a yellow hanbok and a man in a white short-sleeved shirt and black trousers. As I approached, I noticed they wore the red great leader pins on their left breasts. They did not, however, wear smiles.

They were the two guides assigned to our tour group. One male, and one female, to better facilitate communication with the varying interests of the passengers. Both spoke Mandarin fluently. The lady interacted mostly with the female tourists, older middle-aged ladies, and so I had few chances to discover who she was. She was pretty in a conventional way, or at least she would have been if she had smiled more.

The male guide, however, I had much more opportunities to chat with. Especially after he escorted roommate and myself back after our attempted escape from Yanggakdo. Complimenting him on his native-level Mandarin, he explained that he had grown up and went to university in China, so I surmised that he was from a highly mobile urban upper class – not the refugees hiding in fear of deportation by the Chinese authorities (and subsequent imprisonment), but those officially sanctioned to live, work, and conduct trade for the state abroad in its most important neighbor.

And then there was someone else, another local guide attached to our tour group. An ‘English-speaker’. He did not speak Mandarin, and could not interact with any of the mainland tourists. Since there were no English-speakers in our group, other than myself and roommate, I can only surmise that he was there because of me, which was initially quite alarming. However, his English language abilities seemed somewhat limited, which I supposed was due to a lack of oral practice with a native speaking partner. Perhaps he was feigning, and listening intently to my every word, or perhaps not.

(Pyongyang) A soft-serve ice cream vendor. Too bad there was only one flavor.

In our first conversation, I discovered that he was about my age and had just graduated from Kim Il Sung University’s mathematics department before starting with the tour agency. I wondered what a member of the elite and a rising cadre in the Workers Party was doing here as my tour guide. Was I paranoid to assume that he was there as my personal minder? Was he just as suspicious of me as I was of him? He seemed like a nice guy. Treated me to an ice cream one time when I was bored to tears by the overpriced-souvenir-shopping component of the tour.

(Arirang Mass Games, Pyongyang) I wonder what was on her playlist. Maybe some Super Junior?

At the Mass Games, I sat pretty close to the guides up front since I wanted a good view of the show, and I noticed that one of the female guides (for the other tour group) was listening to a slim iPod Nano (probably bored since she’d seen the show before). Even I don’t have an iPod Nano! Being a tour guide could be pretty lucrative since it allows travel and regular access to foreigners, and the possibility of hard currency tips and gifts for barter, but I didn’t think it would be that lucrative. I guess even in an egalitarian society some are more equal than others.

Previously on Pyongyang Diaries: Escape from Yanggakdo!
Next time: The People