Great article by the way. Thumbs up from an NTU old boy. :)

Many students make up their minds early on into the course that they intend to SU a certain subject and so they skip classes regularly knowing that they are covered.

That was what was said about the other possible effect of the NUS S/U policy. But seriously, you only have 3 S/U options and you have so many other restrictions on the modules that you can S/U. So by saying that it will lead to a weakening incentive to work hard would be inaccurate because you only have a limited number of S/U options and you can’t be lazy forever. You would still want to give it your best shot.

My take is that if a student chooses to be lazy, no matter which model the university takes after, it would not make a difference.

Personally speaking, I am still a staunch supporter for the NUS S/U system (not simply because I’m from NUS). My main contention with the old system is that anyone who has S/Ued their modules will simply have no motivation to keep up in putting in effort.

Indeed, speaking from experience, after S/Uing my Sociology module, I stopped doing all my readings and began skipping lectures. Unfortunately, the irony was I aced my mid-term essay but since the deal was done, I let that module rot on the sideline anyway.

That mentioned, I am personally convinced that a liberal or a restrictive S/U policy would not hardly “undermine the credibility of the degrees”, if any, since the S/U policy is capped to a small percentage of the overall GPA.

Adopting a S/U policy by top universities has never increased the credibility or ranking or quality of a university education system. To protect the credibility of a degree through a more stringent S/U policy seems more retrogressive than progressive.