See, this here, pisses me off.
Every year, due to the ill-conceived and unjustly small number of places available in local Medical schools, many hundreds of Singapore students (who perform better academically and thus are better qualified than many foreigners who get to study Medicine in their own countries with much larger Med school intakes), many with straight As, are forced to spend a million dollars (with some parents going into serious debt or selling their homes to support their son/daughter's aspirations) to study Medicine overseas.
And most of these Singaporeans do succeed in completing their medical degrees from Universities and medical schools recognized by Singapore Medical Council (SMC). Some of these overseas Med schools and Universities are even more reputable and internationally recognized than local Med schools.
So this proves it's not truly a matter of prudently restricting local Med school student intake for the sake of quality control, but more actually a matter of ill-conceived and maladjusted education policies resulting in overly small local Med school intakes, resulting in a critical shortage of medical doctors in Singapore, in turn resulting in thousands of foreigners (some with dubious academic performance, medical training and professional qualifications) being imported in to meet Singapore's needs.
How would you feel if you were one of many such hundreds of Singaporeans every year, perform better (eg. straight As) than many of the foreigners imported in to meet the shortage, and thus feel you're more deserving but are nonetheless turned away from local Med schools, only because of the overly small intake of students for local Med schools.
Which leaves you with 2 choices : either struggle to borrow a million dollars to receive a Medical school education overseas recognized by SMC, or give up on your lifelong aspirations to serve society as a doctor. While every year, you see/hear the local media announce, "Shortage of medical doctors in Singapore, foreign doctors imported in to meet Singapore's needs".
S'pore sees a rise in foreign doctors
More than a quarter of the doctors in the public healthcare sector are foreigners.
At the end of last year, public hospitals and polyclinics had more than 2,100 foreign doctors in their employ and the number continues to grow as Singapore faces a shortage of trained medical staff.
Full article :
http://mypaper.sg/top-stories/spore-sees-rise-foreign-doctors-20151123