recognised universities Archives

Recently, I went to open a business account with a local established bank. I was served by a Business Banking Manager, a fresh graduate, who had worked for the bank for just 4 months! He had a finance degree from SIM.

Ok, this bank, as far as I know, is not owned even partially by the Spore govt, although its leaders have ties with the ruling elite. I’m also not sure which finance degree he obtained, as in which was the awarding university (SIM is not a university; pls don’t confuse SIM with UniSIM).

Thus the finance degree he obtained is most likely an external degree. My point is, you may still get employed by an established company if you have not graduated from any of the local universities, such as NUS, NTU, SMU or SUTD. It could well be that the finance or banking industry has its own list of recognised university degrees, such as the nursing or hospitality industries, and these degrees may even be external or distance-learning degrees.

Thus if you are interested in a particular industry, you’d need to find out which are the universities recognised by the big names in that industry.

In the ST article dated June 8 2012, “SIM grads find jobs easily, but earn less”, it was reported that SIM grads typically received a starting salary of between $2400 to $2600 while those from the public universities normally received more than $3000.

This should not come as a surprise to Singaporeans. Please remember that SIM does NOT have university status in Singapore, so the degrees it awards are not considered equal to those from NUS, NTU, SMU or SUTD, as far as the government of Singapore is concerned. SIM is not the same as UniSIM, which is a recognised private university. To see the list of universities in Singapore recognised by the government as universities, click here.

If you have poor A-level results and have been rejected by the local public universities and you want to explore other options, click here.

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