About Us
 Economics graduating class of 1960, with faculty members (from left) Lim Tay Boh, Thomas Silcock, Charles Gamba, and Ungku Aziz. The class included two who eventually joined the Department as faculty members, Lee Soo Ann (third from left in the back row) and Amina Tyabji (seated, third from left), and a future cabinet minister, S.  Dhanabalan (seated second from right). |
|
The NUS Department of Economics has an established reputation as one of the largest and leading economics departments in Asia. With more than 50 faculty members, our research contributions span all the major fields of economics and have an international impact on the discipline. We also aim to contribute to public policy discussion in Singapore through our research in applied fields and through our outreach activities. The flexible system of undergraduate education at NUS allows students to pursue their interest in economics in different ways. Students can take economics as a major or minor subject. There are also special programmes where economics is studied alongside other disciplines; specifically, there are cross-disciplinary programmes (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) and Data Science and Economics) as well as double degree programmes with business administration, engineering, law, business analytics, and information systems. Each year around 400 undergraduates take up economics as a major or in one of the special programmes involving economics. At the graduate level, the Department offers a popular one-year taught masters course that admits around 100 students. We also maintain a doctoral program that admits around ten students each year; upon graduation, many of our students take up attractive positions in academia and industry throughout the Asia-Pacific region. The size and research diversity of our faculty members enables a wide range of curricular offerings, so that our students can specialize in almost any area of economics that interests them. The Department can trace its origin to 1934, when economics was taught at Raffles College, and our graduates have made important contributions to this nation since then. Goh Keng Swee, one of modern Singapore’s founding fathers, is a graduate of the Department. And so is Goh Chok Tong, the second prime minister of Singapore. In the current Cabinet, Josephine Teo, the Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs, is an alumnus. Other prominent public figures who studied economics with us include Ngiam Tong Dow (who was formerly head of the Civil Service and chair of the Housing Development Board), Ravi Menon (former Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore), and Ho Kwon Ping (ex-journalist and prominent entrepreneur). We remain dedicated to our task of providing an outstanding training in economics to a new generation of students from Singapore and around the world, in order to help them excel at whatever they choose to do. January, 2023
|
