1. I Love Nantah

2. Is Nantah gone forever?

3. The Internet Nantah Proposal

4. The advantages of Internet Nantah

5. Is Internet Nantah a Dream or Reality?

6. Long Live Nanyang University

"Nantah" means "Nanyang University, Singapore".

"SU" means "University of Singapore".

"NUS" means "National University of Singapore".

"NTU" means "Nanyang Technological University of Singapore".

In 1955 Nanyang University (Nantah) started the pre-university classes at Hua Chong High School, Singapore. I enrolled as a science student.

In 1956 Nantah started the first year university classes at its Yunnan campus in Singapore, I enrolled as a mathematics student. I graduated at the end of 1959.

In February 1960 I went to Queen's University, Belfast, UK for post graduate research in mathematics. I finished my MSc and PhD. degrees in 1961 and 1962 respectively.

I am greatly indebted to Nantah for giving me the undergraduate education as good as any other universities but to me, it is the best.

After teaching at Queen's University for a year, I returned to Singapore to serve Nantah as a teaching staff from 1963 to 1964. I returned to serve Nantah again in 1966 until its merger with the University of Singapore (SU) forming the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 1980.

The length of time of my association with Nantah is nearly 22 years and first five of which as a student. I held teaching as well as administrative positions at various times, sat on all the important committees as well as the University Council, was the Head of Department of Mathematics, Director of Lee Kong Chiang Institute of Mathematics, Dean of Faculty of Science and Dean of College of Graduate Studies. I served six Vice Chancellors and one Director General.

I make such a detailed listing of my association with Nantah becauae I want to say the following:

• I love Nantah and want to see its revival as much as other Nantah alumni do.
• I want to see Nantah lives again, stronger, larger and forever.

After the merger of Nantah and SU to form NUS, many Nantah graduates lament the lost of their alma mater. On the other hand, I have not heard graduates of SU lament of their losses.

A committee of six members was formed, three from each university to draft the White paper of the merger. The chairman and co-chairman were the Vice Chancellor of SU and the Director General of Nantah respectively.

It was against my will to sit on the committee, but I have no regret after going through the process. In the first meeting the chairman stressed that the guideline, simple and clear, from above: "Be fair to both and try to do least harm to both universities."

The committee took several months to come up with the final proposal. In the selection of name, SinNan University was suggested. The name was not suitable because it means "having nothing to do" in Hokkien, a local Chinese dialect. After going through a list of other names proposed, The committee finally recommended the new university be called National University of Singapore and its new logo to consist of the existing features in the logos of both universities.

The White Paper is still a confidential document. Until it is declassified, I do not have any right to talk about it. What I want to say is this: the proposal is fair because all the committee knew very well if the merger of the two universities led to any accusation of unfairness, then all the six committee members would be collectively responsible and in big trouble. I sincerely say with my conscience that the White Paper is a very constructive and fair proposal leading to the success of NUS today.

When the two universities were merged, all their students and staff members were moved over to NUS, then used the campus of SU. The old campus of Nantah was subsequently use for the development of Nanyang Technological University (NTU).

I use this piece of history to support my personal view that Nantah is part of NUS and at the same time also the predecessor of NTU, now almost 10 times as large as Nantah in 1980. In a way the merger with SU may well be in the favour of Nantah.

Is Nantah gone forever? Likewise, another question may be asked: Is SU gone forever?

As a matter of fact, if we study the history of some of the great universities today we would notice one common rule: Every great university has gone through different phases of transformations. The University of Paris is a good example.

Many years ago, I had an opportunity to spend three months in France. My first choice was to visit the University of Paris. I told the person at the French Embassy who arranged my program that I would like to spend the first month at the University of Paris. He then asked me which University of Paris. I did not know that there were thirteen different universities from University of Paris I, II ,III up to XIII. Later, I found out a brief sketch of the history of these universities:

• The original University of Paris founded in 1253 was a small university, more like a college..
• It was closed down during the French Revolution.
• A new University of Paris reopened in 1808.
• In 1970, the University of Paris was divided into 13 universities, each with academic autonomy.
• The "Greater University of Paris", the family of 13 universities is very huge. University of Paris VII alone has more that 30,000 students.

Let us come back to the question: " Is Nantah gone forever?" My view is that the original Nantah like the original University of Paris had already served its mission and it is now gone forever. There is no way and also no need to bring it back.

However, the Greater Nantah like the Greater University of Paris is well and alive. It has just gone through its first phase of transformation. Part of it is in NUS and part of it is in NTU. This Greater Nantah will definitely grow even larger and more versatile to meet the challenges of the new century.

With Internet playing increasingly an important role and the merging of technologies, it is my belief that the next important phase of development of Greater Nantah has to be the Internet Nantah. This is the main theme of this paper.

In 1995, Nantah alumni association in Singapore organised the Worldwide Nantah Reunion Dinner. The venue naturally was at the old campus of Nantah, now belonged to NTU. The dinner was certainly most memorable. The guest of honour was Mr. Goh Chok Tong, the Prime Minister of Singapore. More than 10 restaurants served more than 600 tables for more than 6000 alumni and guests. It was perhaps the grandest dinner ever organised in Singapore. At least it was the grandest dinner I and my wife had ever attended. It really made my tears come down when visiting the university campus we had lived for so many years and met so many friends from Nantah and their families. It was the night of all nights and I would never forget it.

On our way back to my hotel in Dr Low Hwee Boon's car, I said to Hwee Boon: let us help to make Nantah live again. He asked me how. I said: let us start an Internet Nantah. Dr. Low being a very senior staff of ISS, the key institute of information research centre knew what it meant. He immediately supported the idea and we agreed that I would write the first draft of the proposal and we would take it from there.

Three days later, Hwee Boon and I met to discuss the proposal which I had written in Chinese. He added many new ideas and in less than a week, we had our White Paper for Internet Nantah.

Coincidently, Nantah's former Secretary General Mr. Pan Shou came to visit ISS around that time. ISS had kindly agreed to help him to create a website for his Chinese calligraphy. Mr. Pan Shou was very excited with our proposal of Internet Nantah and encouraged us to go ahead.

Unfortunately both Hwee Boon and I were busy in our other commitments leaving the White Paper stayed as a piece of document.

In 1996, i.e. the year that followed, I was not able to attend the Worldwide Nantah Reunion Dinner held in Kuala Lumpur. Hwee Boon presented our proposal of Internet Nantah to the representatives of the various Nantah alumni associations.

More recently, in June 2000, the Seventh Worldwide Nantah Reunion Dinner was held in Vancouver. I attended the dinner but sad to hear that the Internet Nantah proposal was dropped mainly because no one had good ideas to implement it. I then ask myself : Should I take it up again ?

After the Vancouver dinner two things happened which had

encouraged me to throw my hat into the ring again.

First I discovered a very impressive Nantah website, http://www.nantah.org single handedly created by Kang Xuewen. I was deeply touched and moved by his effort in collecting such a wealth of valuable information about Nantah. Xuewen was my student at Nantah for one and a half year and I wrote a fine testimonial for him to continue his studies in Canada. It is admirable that he has dedicated himself for such a noble task for the love of Nantah. I said to myself: if only there are a few more Nantah alumni like Xuewen then creating a successful Internet Nantah should be possible.

The second Nantah website http://www.nantahfriends which impressed me is created by Dr. Foo Ven Yee, a Nantah alumnus whom I met many years ago in Penang. His brother Boon Seng was my very special student; we were more like friends than teacher and student. This website uses the Chinese idoms: It is better to light a candle than cursing the darkness. How true it is! It take little effort for Ven Yee and I to agree on the promotion of this uplifting wisdom and look into the establishment of Internet Nantah seriously.

This is the best of times for our alumni to show to the world our true love for Nantah. The technologies are there and the timing is right for the establishment of Internet Nantah. I personally believe that we have a very good chance of success. We rather try and fail than not to try at all!

In 1992 at the first Worldwide Nantah Reunion held in Toronto, Canada, Dr Han Su Yin proposed to build in a new Nantah in Canada. The other country considered for the site of the new Nantah was Malaysia. In either case, I was keen to offer my service either as a permanent resident of Canada or a citizen of Malaysia.

Just before the Toronto reunion, two Nantah alumni and I had jointly bought a very beautiful piece of land of 150 acres in Peachland, a holiday resort town, over looking the famous Okanagan Lake and is only 4 hour drive from Vancouver. After hearing the call to establish Nantah from our friends in Toronto, I was very delighted and said to my wife : Should I encourage Dr. Choo and Dr. Chan to donate half of our Peachland property to build a new Nantah ? My wife thought that we would require a larger piece of land to build a residential university. I started to make the inquiry and a few days later my real estate agent phoned me saying that he had found a piece of land of 534 acre, zoned as holiday resort property, about 10 minutes drive from Peachland with a asking price of only Cad$500,000. It was too good to be true! Next day the agent showed us the land which was a really beautiful piece of property with two lakes, one smaller lake near the entrance and a much larger lake at the centre. The size, the hills and valleys reminded us of the old Nantah campus in Singapore. We took many photos of the property and in our minds, it was without doubt a most ideal property for a new Residential Nantah.

The next day, we went to see the chief engineer of Peachland to find out whether the property we saw could be rezoned for a privite residential university. We were told that most likely we would get approval as long as the university would allow public access for picnics like a public park. The major costs would be the installation of infrastructure such as roads, powerlines, water supplies etc. I started to make a rough estimate for the cost to build a residential university including the cost of all buildings. The figure exceeded Cad$100 millions or US$60 millions. But who would fund this project?

After this fact finding exercise I came to a simple conclusion. If funding is available, then Canada is the best place to build a first class residential university for the new Nantah. If someone tells me: Dr. Teh here is a cheque of Cad$100 millions. Go and help me to build a first class residential university like the old Nantah, I would gladly accept the task and move instantly.

Until such miracle happens, I have to think of something else, i.e. building a new Nantah on Internet.

To build an Internet Nantah, the cost of land, infrastructure and buildings are out of the formula. True, the Internet infrastructure is very complex and costly to build with leading companies still make large investments to improve the quality of the whole Internet universe. We would come in as a "tenant", paying a small web hosting fee and build our virtual Nantah campus to run our courses on Internet. We would also need a strong team of academic staff to put together the courses, for the system administrators, programmers, artists to maintain the virtual campus.

My estimate is that CAD$5 millions would be sufficient to build an Internet Nantah. It is about 5 % of the cost to build a residential university in Canada.

I am aware that a few Internet universities have been set up with an average cost of US$20 millions or CAD$36 millions. My secret to build at lower cost lies in the fact that Internet Nantah is not just another Internet university. It would be built with a mission for the rebirth of Nantah. It would get the full support of many alumni and great friends of Nantah. Many alumni are outstanding professors in universities or recently retired from university teaching. I am confident that I would be able to persuade many of them to form a core of academic staff accepting honorariums and share holdings in place of regular salaries until Internet Nantah starts to generate revenues like a successful dot-com company. I even believe in the domino effect that more and more alumni and friends will be drawn to support the mission once the Internet Nantah is established and viable.

Student Admission of Internet Nantah

It would take up to a few years build a residential university before its first student admission apart from the high cost of constructions.

For an Internet Nantah, it is relatively shift. It is not exaggerated to say that it takes 5 minutes to search and register a domain name; the Internet university is then in existence theoretically. I registered the domain name iNantah.com this purpose and we would be ready to build the virtual campus. Further down the track we would require an arrays of powerful Internet servers with all the necessary software and programs for an Internet university. We would even reconstruct a virtual campus with 3D graphics to mirror the beautiful Yunan Yuan which was once owned by Nantah.

The appointment of academic staff would poise relatively less hassles. The academic staff, either full time or part time, work at where they are without problems such as relocation. Since the pioneers will be mostly our alumni whom we know, official letters of appointment can be sent by email to confirm the verbal discussions on phone.

If the funding of CAD$5 millions is assured, it would take us about a year to build Internet Nantah and start to admit students. A year may be short to build a residential university, but it is a long time for a dot.com company. We need to move quickly and decisively!

We are now in a new century of ever increasing global competition and you have to forward-looking, imaginative, innovative and creative to be a real winner.

Searching Yahoo for the topic "distance learning university", the Internet search engine returns a very long list of results many of which are Internet universities or colleges offering courses for students globally. Is our proposed Internet Nantah able to survive and prosper in such a fiercely competitive global market?

Apart from our ability to compete in Internet technology, it depends on the courses that Internet Nantah plan to offer. It is quite natural for many of us to say we just offer courses offered by Nantah before or to offer the most popular courses from our survey of the global market. If that is our final decision, then I can say without hesitation that we will certainly fail. The correct approach should be that we will offer courses which are relevant to market demand and yet within our own strength so that the qualities of our courses will be able to meet challenges from other Internet universities or colleges.

I am aware that we would require thorough discussions by a group of experts in the planning stage to decide on the courses to offer by Internet Nantah. Nevertheless, I put up my tentative proposal for four departments with the hope to initiate a forum for further discussions:

Many universities today are still offering mathematics and computer sciences as separate disciplines. Having in both disciplines myself, I deeply feel that students of mathematics should know as much Information Technology as possible so that they will appreciate more of their knowledge in mathematics contribute more after graduation. Nantah had visible and admirable tradition in mathematics and computer science during its existence in Singapore. We shall continue to build on our strength offering the integrated courses in both disciplines to train a new breed of graduates who will be more productive and therefore more sucessful in life.

English language will continue to be the world's most useful language for the foreseeable future. Nevertheless, the importance of Chinese Language is catching up is increasingly felt and people who have good command of both English and Chinese languages plays important roles in many fields.

A good command of language extends itself to writing from speaking and reading. The full power of a language is in its expression of much deeper thoughts through writing to create a lasting impact. To achieve good writing skill, one has to know and appreciate the culture, history and possibly philosophy associated with the language.

Nantah was the first Chinese University built overseas. Its tradition in Chinese culture, literatures and language will be followed by Internet Nantah to set up a world class department offering integrated course in English and Chinese.

I strongly believe in the need of a integrated courses in English and Chinese to train truly bilingual graduates. The department will be useful to student not knowing enough either Chinese or English.

Many years ago, a group of Nantah alumni used to organise Arts Exhibition yearly in Singapore. Even I myself had the pleasure to exhibit some of my work in Chinese calligraphy. Recently, Mr Tan Sheng Kwi, a key organiser of the yearly exhibition received an honourable award for his contribution in arts to Singapore. Two years ago when I was in Singapore, I took the opportunity to visit the Nanyang Academic of Fine Arts in Singapore the Dean of which is Mr Ho Ka Leong, our alumnus. I also visited an Art Gallery of Mr. Tan Swee Hian, our alumnus and also an old friend of mine. Nantah in its existence of 25 years had produced many first class artists without actually have a department of fine arts.

Many Nantah alumni are fine singers and musicians too. Remember the famous Nantah Caruso, Mr. Toh Choo Soung ? In my opinion he was and still is the best tenor that I know in Singapore and Malaysia. In each and every Worldwide Nantah Reunion, the very fine choir at the various dinners is always most memorable. I am still proud of the choir of the Department of Mathematics in Nantah. In the musical evening for the first public use of the new Auditorium, the choir was conducted Ms Soo Yen Qin, wife of Dr. Tan Sie Keng, an accomplished pianist and also our alumnus.

It is always my pleasure to recall the artists, singers and musicians that Nantah produced. Perhaps, its campus has something special in what Chinese believed, i.e. "Nin Qi" which inspired its graduate. Such inspiration came from the combination of the natural beauty of Yunnan Yuan and the very rich Chinese culture.

It is my hope to build on this unique and most valuable aspect of old Nantah to set up the proposed department.

I believe Internet Nantah is able to go a step further to promote arts and music in digital form. The relevant software tools are playing an increasingly important role in the creations of fine arts and music without a compromise in creativity. The graduates of this department will be in demand working in multimedia companies.

As we all know, students may be able to score high marks in school examinations, but this does not necessarily translated into the excel in creativity. I believe in the need to set up a new department with emphasis in knowledge engineering and creativity. Many Nantah graduates learned from the hard way and were able to do very well when working for higher degrees overseas. I always give credits to Nantah professors for their inspiring teaching methods. It is a worthwhile challenge for Internet Nantah to study how to export old Nantah's creative teaching and learning environment to the world.

The potential market is enormous if an Internet university is set up and run professionally. There it is possible to run it as a highly profitable education enterprise with funding from venture capitals. In the case of Internet Nantah, there is an additional advantage of the mission to re-establish Nantah as a university outside China with rich Chinese traditions.

It is not my intention here to discuss the pros and cons to run Internet Nantah as a profitable enterprise compared to a non-profitable concern supported by government funding and private donations. In my opinion, it is important for Internet Nantah to be able to survive and prosper on merits as any other dot.com entity.

With a funding of CAD$5 millions, Internet Nantah would be able to grow from nothing to a full scale Internet university in three to four years to generate sufficient revenues to cover all the expenses. I strongly believe that Internet Nantah can attract a large number of students if we have strong team of academic staff offering right courses for degrees, postgraduate degrees and diplomas. Internet Nantah is also able to offer to pre-university courses to students who may wish to enrolments into universities in the United States and Canada.

The major cost of a traditional university is the salaries for the academic staff. In many cases, the university pay very high salaries attract the academics highly regarded. In the case of an Internet university, the full time academic staff to run regular courses in studio like the regular classroom lectures. The courses are converted into virtual lectures in the form of digital video clips stored in Internet servers. Likewise, a well known professor may be invited to give a series of virtual lectures with course materials.

The key question is the quality of online video lectures. If it is reasonably good compared with a classroom lecture which may be up to 400 students in a class then many would-be students may chose an Internet university to get his or her degree with the added convenient to stay at home to study, the ability to study part time with greater flexibility.

Let us do some calculations in order to understand the business of an Internet university and the economy of scale. A successful Internet university may be able to attract 100,000 students each paying CAD$1,000.00 per year. At least 50% of its annual revenue of CAD$100 million is the net profit. This represents a very good return for investments. The potential market from China alone is so big that many Internet universities are forming consortium waiting to get into this market.

It may not be the goal of Internet Nantah to become a highly profitable education enterprise. If Internet Nantah is able to fulfil its educational and cultural goals and at the same time is able to accumulate its profits to build a residential university, that will be great.

A successful enterprise may start from an absurd dream. But not every absurd dream leads to a successful enterprise. Internet Nantah is definitely a dream and to many people, may be an absurd dream. Will it lead to a successful education enterprise?

In the first chapter I purposely described in great details of my association with the old Nantah and my involvement in teaching, administrations and research also how I supported six Vice Chancellors in the planning and execution of important plans. I know the complexity of and the difficulty to run a successful university. I am fully aware of the complexity of and the difficulty of running a successful Internet university.

However after analysing the potential difficulties of running a successful Internet Nantah, a special Internet university, I come to a simple conclusion:

Once we can raise the needed seed fund, we can run Internet Nantah like a dot.com company starting from something small. Then gradually expand the size from small to medium, from medium to large and finally become a huge education enterprise.

I believe this is possible because of the unique history and the bilingual strength of old Nantah so that Internet Nantah stands a good chance to capture a reasonable portion of a very huge potential market for offering distant learning courses on Internet. With Nantah alumni all over the world and many are academic staff in universities it is feasible to establish useful partnerships with many universities. A consortium of universities may also be formed to offer a wide range of courses to the students.

I have suggested four tentative groups of courses to be offered as described in the last chapter. They form the basic degree and pre-university programmes. It is also feasible for Internet Nantah to have post-graduate degree programme leading to MSc and PhD degrees.

Being a university, Nantah had its constraints. It faced all kinds of problems many of which are political rather than academic. Because of its distance from the city, it was run as a residential university and hence had to cut down the number of student admission. Because it was supported by government funding it had to follow government policies and adhere to national priorities of Singapore. Such constraints prevented Nantah from fulfilling many great dreams of its founders.

The great advantage of Internet Nantah is that it is totally free from the constraints described above. An Internet University is able to have 100,000 students, about 40 times the size of Nantah. The founder of Nantah, Mr Tan Lark Sye wanted Nantah to be a People University to help as many students as possible. Perhaps this will inspires Nantah alumni to join hand in hand to help Nantah's Father to fulfil his dream through Internet Nantah.

Is Internet Nantah a dream or reality?

My answer is very simple: It is a dream but not absurd. It has very good chance to become a reality. The first and foremost important step is to have the needed seed fund of Cad$5 million as I mentioned in a previous chapter. I like to end with by saying: All set to sail awaiting the easterly wind:

Nantah has completed its historical mission and is gone forever. Then how do we reconcile ourselves by saying: Long Live Nantah?

Two years ago the Winter Olympics Games was held in Northern Japan. In order to create a lasting impression of the high technology of Janpan upon the visitors and the viewers around the world, the organising committee staged a admirable performance in the last act of the closing ceremony. The Setz 4, Presto of the Ninth Symphony of Beethoven was played with the visitors at the stadium singing together. What is admirable is that through the link up of satellite television networks, many choirs in other countries also joined the singing: the Chinese choir in front of the Forbidden Palace, the Australian choir in front of the Opera House, the choirs in USA, UK, Canada and South Africa all in their own soils sang together with the music of Ninth Symphony. This is the first time that the choirs in different countries in different locations and time zones sing together with the help of high technology using satellite television link up,

It was a certain day in 1979 Professor Wu Teh Yaw, then the Dean of College of Graduate Studies and I attended our last meeting on the merger of Nantah and SU. We felt heavy hearted on our way back and said nothing in the car. Then Professor Wu suggested: We write a song dedicated to Nantah so that people will remember the name of Nantah forever. I was delighted and said: Great, you write the lyrics and I compose the tune for the song. We finished the song in a few days. Madam Wu played the piano for Professor Wu and I to sing the new Song together. We were sad that Nantah was about to go. However we were consoled that Nantah had produce 12000 graduates in its short span of existence and would leave a glorious history for people to remember.

In June 2000, the Seventh Worldwide Nantah Alumni Reunion was held in Vancouver. Among the few press reports, one suggested that the name of Nanyang Technological University changed to "Nanyang University". To the alumni of Nantah, this may be a natural suggestion. But I met a friend who is a not a graduate of Nantah. He told me half jokingly: You have 12000 Nantah alumni. If you want to see the name of Nantah lives forever, you have to establish a new Nantah. If you are not able to do that, accept the fate and give up. This really strikes me until now.

Are Nantah alumni to accept the fate for lack of ability to re-establish Nantah? Where are the Spirit of Nantah: We strive to exist, develop and prosper, etc. Where are the fine examples set up by the founders of Nantah?

Recently due to a coincidence, I got in touch with a few alumni and Dr Ven Yee Foo and I jointly proposed the setting up of Internet Nantah. On the one hand , we are able to keep the name of Nanyang University and on the other, we would be able to inherit the noble mission of Mr. Tan Lark Sye, the founder of Nantah to create a university for the people. Hence a group of alumni work together towards the objective to set up Internet Nantah.

It came to my mind suddenly an idea to write a song for Internet Nantah. I went to look for the song which Professor Wu and I wrote together from a pile of old documents. Unfortunately, I was not able to find it. I was not able to remember the lyrics of the song because years had elapsed. Disappointedly, I wrote to Foo Boon Seng telling him my dismay in misplacing the copy of song.

Unexpectedly I received an email from Boon Seng the next day with two lyrics, "Oh Nantah" by himself and "Nantah Song" by Dr Woon Wee Lee, another alumnus. I was so delighted that I started to compose the tune for the latter immediately and finished within half an hour. I suddenly remembered that the tune sounds familiar. It recalled my memory of the choirs of the Winter Olympics in Japan flashed back. I realised it was not my work of inspiration but the main tune of the fourth movement of Ninth Symphony by Beethoven.

It is so beautiful and also a rare coincidence that Beethoven may have written the music for Nantah song almost two hundred years ago!

When Beethoven wrote his Ninth Symphony, he had been deaf for a few years. It was such a great misery for Beethoven but he refused to accept the fate, kept his mouth shut but carried on to produced this piece of work which is arguably the finest, the grandest and most touching music for the choirs. In a moment with least to be pleased about, he finish the last movement of Ninth Symphony dedicated to Praise entitled "Ode To Joy".

Whenever I think of Beethoven, I try to encourage myself: "Not to accept the fate and keep my mouth shut. This is not the end of the story. Not to give up."

The establishment of Internet Nantah has deeper meaning than merely to keep the name of Nanyang University. Its greater importance is to inherit and develop a vision to produce a large number of graduates to become professionals contributing to the society with the combination of latest technologies and teaching methods.

Many people may be still sceptical with the significance of Internet university. The main reason is that such a university is not easy for offering courses which require a lot of practicals such as medicine, dentistry or even laws. However, these the courses are not under our consideration of offering because they are not what we know best and neither Nantah offered such courses. The courses which are more suitable for Internet university are information technology, mathematics, languages, literatures etc. They are the heritage from Nantah and we plan to extend it within the context of Internet Nantah.

Internet Nantah may even play an important role to promote the cultural understanding between East and West. With Nantah then the only Chinese university outside China (including Taiwan) as its predecessor as well as the inheritance of traditional Chinese culture but geographically in the environ of west, Internet Nantah has the right credentials to promote the cultural exchange of East and West.

Internet Nantah would require exceptional contribution to make its existence felt. With distant learning its preliminary stage and the quantum leap of the Internet technology, it offer Internet Nantah some of the best opportunities. Internet Nantah is able to use existing technology and ideas to offer courses and at the same time try out new technologies and ideas in teaching and examination methods or even a more effective education system.

From the angle of a traditional university, an overlook of the advantage of distant learning may be short sighted or pessimistic. As a matter of fact, Internet University may even by more effective in courses such as media and communication, economics, social psychology and Internet culture, etc. It would be more constructive to research and discover the strength of distant learning using Internet. Some educationists are sceptical about the relevance of examination system of Internet University. Likewise, the current examination systems in universities also have their shortcomings. Most of these systems favour memorisation rather than creativity. Many educationists are aware of the shortcomings and find ways to rectify them. The examination methods used in Internet university may be worth looking into and adopted partially in educational reform.

Few years ago, many people thought that the 21st century will be the century for Asian countries. This prediction is somewhat muted because of the down turn after the currency crisis of late 1990s. Now the Asian economies have started to recover and may take off again sooner or later. Some people start to ask: Do Asian economies have the ability to excel the West?

It is clear to everyone that the competitiveness of 21st century does not lies in natural resources and man human populations but imagination and creativity. The education systems in Asian countries over emphasise marks scored and the development of creativity may be somewhat neglected. In order to compete with the West, it may be necessary to have basic reforms in educational systems. However it is easily to talk than to put the ideas into practice. Well known universities do not want to take the lead which may create a chaos and the lessor known universities are reluctant to do so.

From various considerations, it is my opinion that Internet Nantah is one of the most suitable candidate to play to role in accepting the challenge and win. It is simple to create a forum for the Reform of Asian Educational Systems. Internet Nantah may put the ideas collated into practice to create a new frontier in education. It may well be a prelude leading to a series of educational reforms in Asian countries.

The name of Bethoven lives forever because of his contribution in music. Internet Nantah must have significant contribution in education to make the name of Nanyang University lives forever. The university in its Yunnan Yen campus in Singapore produced 12000 graduates contributed the admirable Spirit of Nantah. Hopefully Internet Nantah is able to follow this good example, again sail in uncharted water to find a new frontier and make admirable contributions as its predecessor especially to the education reform. Then people the world over would acknowledge the contributions and say from their hearts: Long Live Nantah.

This is the real "Long Live Nantah".

Professor Teh Hoon Heng

21 October 2000

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