Higher education is training of the mind

I agree with the writer of the letter “Purpose of higher education is to find motivation towards excellence” (May 13).

Ask Singaporean parents why they send their children to university and the answer is invariably: “To get a good education, a good job and a high salary.”

But higher education is a training of the mind; getting a job is secondary. For example, Margaret Thatcher, who became a barrister in 1953 and Britain’s first female prime minister in 1979, studied chemistry at Oxford.