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Why is NUS medical school slipping in rankings?

The latest Quacquarelli Symonds ranking of universities by subject makes for encouraging reading (“NUS, NTU among top 10 in global subject rankings”; April 29, Channel NewsAsia).

The latest Quacquarelli Symonds ranking of universities by subject makes for encouraging reading (“NUS, NTU among top 10 in global subject rankings”; April 29, Channel NewsAsia).

Both the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University made headway, particularly in their engineering courses.

It is surprising, however, that NUS is outside the top 20 for its medicine course, behind other Asia-Pacific universities such as the University of Sydney, University of Melbourne and University of Tokyo.

This is despite the medical school being the most established among the NUS faculties.

Indeed, the present university grew out of the medical faculty, which was established in 1905. Disturbingly, a decline in research excellence was highlighted earlier.

According to the Academic Ranking of World Universities — the oldest established ranking system for universities (since 2003) and which relies on a more objective assessment — the NUS medical faculty fell out of the top 100.

Besides the issues of education and research excellence, there have been revelations of fraudulent research and lack of integrity by its former faculty.

Mr Anoop Shankar was exposed last year in the United States for faking his curriculum vitae. Previously, Dr Alirio Melendez was found guilty of authoring fraudulent papers during his time here.

While NUS has yet to reveal its findings regarding any research fraud by Mr Shankar, Dr Melendez has had 14 scientific papers retracted so far and this is expected to exceed 20 eventually.

Given the healthcare challenges Singapore faces, there is a dire need for top-quality doctors, and our universities must play a critical role.

It is not enough, however, to provide the best medical course or to hone cutting-edge research. The product should first and foremost be doctors of impeccable integrity and compassion, even if a ranking does not formally capture such an outcome.

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