Now, let me talk about educational opportunities and university funding. Several MPs have asked how the review will affect students. Let me assure everybody again that nobody will be denied an educational opportunity which is appropriate to his talents and abilities. Meritocracy and full and equal opportunities are key tenets of our society, and always will be.

Prof. Low Seow Chay today said that when he was a university student in 1969, he paid annual university fees of $600 at a time when the starting salary of graduates was $900 per month. So now that starting salaries are $1,500-$2,000, university fees should be lower than the starting salaries, but they are not. I think this is the wrong principle.

Prof. Low earned $900 as a starting salary at a time when only 4% of the cohort went to university. He was very privileged to go to university. Today, 21% enter university. So graduates no longer command as large a premium when they start work. Are they badly off? No. Are they as privileged as their previous generation? Neither. But the relativities have shifted. And because we have widened university education, we have allowed the economy to grow. Graduates are not poor, and I think we can no longer expect to say university fees should be lower than their starting salaries. Because even now, university fees are still small compared to their earning power. Even if you add up all the university fees for taking an engineering programme, let us say, $6,000 a year x 4 years is $24,000, it is one year of a starting salary. In fact, it is very affordable.

It is not the right principle to say fees must be lower than starting salaries. The right principle is to relate fees to the cost of the university education and to the value of this university education to the individual over his working life. Here, I agree with Prof. Low that we should be looking at the cost of providing undergraduate education and separate out the cost of post-graduate education and the research institutes. In fact, that is how MOE does its sums. But even then, you must remember, since 1969, the number of undergraduates has gone up six-fold. The quality of university education has improved tremendously. The facilities have changed, the laboratories have changed, the quality of the staff we are looking for has gone up, and there are the opportunities to travel and link up with other institutions. Who is going to pay the cost of all these?