Yale University and the National University of Singapore (NUS) agreed in 2011 to open Yale-NUS College, an autonomous liberal arts college within NUS. As the College’s first president, I recount in this essay some of the successes and challenges of creating the College, which opened in 2013, and the decision of NUS in 2021 to end the partnership as of 2025. I analyze the College’s educational offerings, the political controversies surrounding its establishment and eventual closure, the finances of a small-scale, elite college within a large public university, and the broad social changes that contributed to the College’s fate.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2009, the president of the National University of Singapore (NUS) approached the president of Yale University with an intriguing proposition. Singapore was interested in founding a new college, along the lines of leading American liberal arts colleges, to encourage innovative and interdisciplinary learning. Yale President Richard C. Levin had a strong interest in the rise of universities in Asia and, at Yale’s tercentennial in 2001, had committed the Ivy League university to a global future. NUS President Tan Chorh Chuan, a physician and educator noted as the mastermind of Singapore’s successful response to the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic, had long fostered an interest in sponsoring active, creative learning among Singaporean youth. This ambition coincided with the government of Singapore’s enthusiasm about making the island nation a hub of regional, or global, education. After two years of negotiations, the two universities signed an agreement to open Yale-NUS College (“Yale-NUS” or “the College”), an autonomous college within the National University of Singapore. On July 1, 2012, I became the College’s first president.
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