News this week included: Lawrence Wong meets Vladimir Putin; Lazada the latest firm to cut jobs; soaring AI course enrolment; some 400 workers claim unpaid wages from air-con firms; a foreign worker housing ban in a Geylang condo; TAFEP investigates an alleged “Malaysian only” job ad by Micron; UN concludes that Israel deliberately targeted children and committed genocide in Gaza; two Singaporeans issued orders under the Internal Security Act for Gaza-related extremism; more families to receive support from the Chinese Development Assistance Council after the income threshold is raised; a LawSoc study finds that lawyer attrition is driven by a toxic culture, bullying, and court pressures; petrol prices down; greater transparency on property firms’ and agents’ disciplinary records; the success of “siu dai by default” is prompting the Health Promotion Board’s new “low sodium by default”; Sheikh Haikel and Anna Belle Francis share their struggles building their halal Hainanese food group; the challenges with overseas adoptions; ST multimedia piece on Changi Airport’s rough sleepers; CNA on a mum’s awkward first period talk with her daughter; muted coral spawning in our waters this year; a new species of scarab beetle discovered in Pulau Ubin; and holidaymakers celebrate 11 public holidays and five long weekends in 2027.
Below are the issues we explore in depth:
Society: A rank affair
Silly season is upon us—the time when universities tremulously scour global rankings to see where they stand, much like students sweating on their finals scores. Among the most prominent self-ordained evaluators is Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), a London-headquartered firm that also provides a raft of consulting services to some of the very universities it judges. A 2021 Berkeley study found that such “conflicts of interest may produce significant distortions in global university rankings.” Last year, a non-profit that combats research fraud in India questioned QS’s partnership with Elsevier, one of the world’s largest academic publishers. QS uses a “papers per faculty” metric in its regional (though not global) rankings. Whether or not that partnership influences methodology, there’s a certain smell to it.
Even without these malodorous suspicions, the very idea that any one ranking can capture so many universities, so staggeringly varied in scale, resources, and mission, invites ridicule. One of the most heavily weighted metrics QS uses is “academic reputation”. Faculty are asked to list other institutions that they think are making meaningful contributions in their fields. Nearly 15 years ago—rankings have plagued higher education for a while—the writer Malcolm Gladwell wondered how any one person could reasonably assess thousands of universities. (QS doesn’t reveal survey questions, just their broad thrust.) Confronted by this impossible task, many likely fall back on the usual suspects: the Ivies, Oxbridge, and others with decades and centuries of accumulated prestige. Some, Gladwell suggested, may simply consult previous editions of the very rankings they’re now helping determine. A second reputational measure asks employers similar questions and suffers from the same limitations. Rankings therefore reinforce age-old dominance, conferring the visibility and legitimacy that draws students and scholars from around the world. The result is a feedback loop that strengthens legacy institutions and deprives others of talent—further restricting the sites and kinds of knowledge production.
Some argue that the rise of institutions around Asia rebukes such criticism. Of the 20 “top” universities in the latest QS rankings, two are Singaporean, two Chinese, and two from Hong Kong (all between 11-20). But geographical diversity alone won’t exonerate QS. Another of its metrics is “citations per faculty”—which rewards research output and the frequency with which others refer to it. This too privileges certain kinds of scholarship. STEM disciplines naturally produce more papers and attract more citations than the humanities. Researchers are also incentivised to publish in elite journals, the majority of which are American or European, and favour work that either speaks directly to their societies, or has universal relevance. Research rooted in places like Singapore suffers. “Since critical scholarship on Singapore is neither valued by…industry, nor…state, why bother?” said Cherian George, formerly of these shores and now with the Hong Kong Baptist University. Conversations about academia here tend to focus on political restrictions, but the structural conditions created by global rankings are just as consequential.
The allure of rankings is understandable. For universities, it’s an easy differentiator; for students, a decision enabler. Estimates suggest there are around 30,000 universities globally. QS itself claims to evaluate 7,000 before ranking around 1,500. Without a heuristic, students may feel lost. Still, a heuristic is useful only if it has significant inferential value. Among suggestions for ranking agencies to improve their own research outputs are greater survey transparency, limiting comparisons to similar universities, and interactivity that allows readers to assign their own weights to various metrics based on their own priorities. These may not solve all underlying issues, but at least rankings’ utility will be enhanced. Until then, like the man in the old fable searching for his lost ring underneath the lamppost simply because that’s where the light is, they merely dress up convenience as truth.
Society: The workforce generation gap
The inaugural Singapore Workplace Report 2026 has found that only 10 percent of young Singapore workers are engaged at work, six points lower than those above 35. The report defines engagement as workers feeling emotionally connected to and enthusiastic about their work and workplace.
Federico Magni, assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University, felt that this may reflect “a deliberate effort to redraw boundaries and preserve energy, and a more pragmatic stance towards work”. Particularly for Singapore—an always-on, digitally mediated economy—the low engagement levels may not be apathy or dysfunction, but rather a recalibration of how people here relate to work. Indeed, in an increasingly turbulent job market—mass layoffs, degree-holders being asked to re-think traditional notions of job stability, and AI taking over entry level roles—a detachment from work identity could be beneficial for self-preservation. But that doesn’t mean that Gen Z is suddenly “Gen Zen.” Fewer younger workers feel they’re “thriving”; more are stressed, angry, and sad compared to their older counterparts.
