NTU Alumni Night

After a long time, going back to NTU attending NTU alumni night gave different experience.

One most notable is - there are more PRCs students around now. Being late to the event, I only have myself punished for not knowing the "buffet culture". since uni years, queueing for free stuff has been part of uni culture. ever since when, it turned sour, where people being selfish, by loading their plate with tons of food, and cutting queue shamelessly. To picture it vividly, we had only one last dish - cauly-flower (the less attractive dish to our PRCs friends) to fill up stomach, by using a bowl - there wasn't a plate left! And, this was just 15mins after the event started. Hungry ghost festival har?

With the unpleased stomach, we then went for the main highlight - Alumni Night. I was happy to find comfortable seats in the auditorium (as majority of the hungry ghosts left after ravaging the buffet). Our dear NTU pres, Dr Su, gave a opening speech, with a standard template that you can google it from the internet. The stage backdrop painted 3 big words - bond, share, unity. However, I felt that his speech did not vibrate these messages out - rather focusing so much on the statistic over NTU achievement. Has ranking becoming the only focus for tertiary education?

Except for the founding history in 1960s, the existing NTU has changed so much - and I do not see the linkage back with its cultural roots. The identity now is so weak, and further weakened by huge imports of different background students, though academically excellent. While forcefully holding on to long-lost roots, it sets main focus on improving ranking - which help little in setting clear sense of identity. The conflicting goals would lead the university to no-where.

NTU should make bolder move - in improving university quality and not just on academic ranking.