The last hurdle

Dear Pupu,

At long last the exams for my final semester as an undergraduate is starting soon. I just want to get it over and done with. I think that the so-called higher education in Singapore is losing its purpose. Students are competing against each other in a memory and calculator punching contest. And after the exams, almost everything will be forgotten. So instead of being forced to memorise junk and vomit it out during exams, why not have meaningful projects that allows students to apply what they have learned?

If the education system is still so focused on exams, perhaps they should lighten the burden of memorising by allowing students to bring in materials. The questions would then be application based, testing on the concepts. With the current system, students are so focused on swallowing junk that the courses have lost its purpose.