National University of Singapore

Overview

The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a public university founded in 1905 and considered the national university in the country. It is also the oldest post-secondary institution in Singapore and one of the best universities in the Asia-Pacific region. It consistently places among the top 20 universities in various world rankings.

NUS offers academic programs in a broad range of disciplines including law, medicine, sciences, engineering, business, arts, and social sciences. It also has collaboration with international universities, particularly with Yale University for liberal arts studies. NUS follows a semester-based model with features of both the British and American higher learning systems. To date, the university runs 17 faculties and schools across its three campuses in Singapore.

NUS has its origins as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School in 1905. It would go through a series of name changes, such as in 1913 as King Edward VII Medical School and in 1921 as King Edward VII College of Medicine. Meanwhile, a separate college, Raffles College, was opened in 1928 offering arts and social sciences for locals. In 1949, both schools merged to form the University of Malaya.

The University of Malaya would be split later between two campuses, one in Kuala Lumpur and another in Singapore. The Singapore branch would evolve into NUS in 1980, when it merged with two other Singaporean universities at that time: the University of Singapore and Nanyang University.

Through the years, the merger would expand to offer more NUS programs, among others an entrepreneurial education program in the eighties and a graduate school for integrative sciences and engineering opened in 2003.

NUS counts among its notable alumni four Singaporean presidents and prime ministers, two Malaysian prime ministers, several politicians and judges, and business executives. The university has also produced a number of personalities in the sectors of education and entertainment.

Its Arts and Social Sciences offers majors in the fields of humanities, social sciences and Asian studies. On the other hand, its business department confers degrees in accounting, decision sciences, strategy and policy, finance, marketing, management and organization. Meanwhile, students can pursue, among its engineering specialties, degrees in biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical and computing engineering and industrial engineering, and management.

The university also boasts of PhDs in interdisciplinary research spanning engineering, sciences, medicine and interactive and digital media. NUS houses several research institutes that delve into mathematical sciences, biomedical and life sciences, and nanotechnology.