MediaCorp news publication, TODAY Online, is reportedly facing a “legal challenge” over a recent article entitled “Opaque policies, fixation with KPIs, rankings: Why arts and humanities academics quit NUS, NTU”.
The article which was published last Sunday, 6 Jan, has been taken down. It was removed from the website on Thursday, 10 Jan. The article had gone viral during the short time it had been published, garnering 4,543 likes, shares and comments.
On why it took the article down, TODAY explained in a media statement: “The article was taken down on 10 Jan as it is the subject of a legal challenge and our lawyers are looking into the matter.”
TODAY did not mention who initiated the legal challenge, which parties found the article contentious or which portions of the article were disputed.
In an attempt to explain the high turnover rate of academics at National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU), the article interviewed 10 academics who have either left or are in the process of leaving the top local schools.
TODAY suggested that opaque tenure and promotion policies, resistance to innovation, the overemphasis on research publishing over teaching and a “warped” notion of institutional excellence as the reasons why academics have left the two schools, even when they are awarded tenure.
The MediaCorp publication added in the article that both NUS and NTU told them that turnover rate at the affected faculties were not high and that the schools did not provide any numbers.