The National University of Singapore (NUS) announced that it is launching three new undergraduate programmes in 2018, including the first in veterinary medicine in Singapore. The concurrent degree programme with the University of Melbourne will take between 5.5 to 6.5 years to complete. The initial cohort will take in 10 students, and increase subsequently if demand is high.
The institute is also increasing its double major and major-minor combinations by almost 100 percent. There will be 86 new combinations launched in August, and this will take the total to 180.
The other two new degree programmes are in pharmaceutical sciences, as well as a joint degree programme combining the NUS bachelor’s degree in life sciences with the University of Dundee’s bachelor’s degree in biological or biomedical sciences.
NUS senior deputy president and provost Ho Teck Hua said in a media briefing on Monday, Feb 26, that the “carefully curated” combinations will make NUS graduates more versatile. “We hear a lot about employment options for students. The dream is that when they finish, they have multiple job offers from the different domains, and they have a chance to choose. The possibilities are endless.”
Currently, around 15 per cent of each cohort of NUS graduates are trained in more than one discipline. Moving forward, the goal is to increase that figure to at least 50 percent of each cohort, said Prof Ho.