Tom’s family was so poor that his wife could not afford to buy a piece of steak for her husband to eat before the bout. Using his experience, Tom kept his rival at bay and almost claimed victory in the 11th round. But after throwing a series of precision punches, he failed to land the decisive one which would knock his rival out.

And at that moment, he was haunted by a piece of steak.

Tom lost the bout.

At the National University of Singapore (NUS), I suddenly remembered my teacher’s words as I saw a Vietnamese student tucking into a steak with relish. It was my nephew who is studying there. Before I left for Singapore, my sister asked me to “go and see how your nephew is living there.”

That was how I arrived at the NUS canteen. That piece of steak was as big as the hand of a working man. It cost all of 3.5 Singapore dollars (about VND 40,000).

“You don’t have to worry, the foods is so delicious there and the prices are also reasonable,” I told my sister later, smacking my tongue as I remembered the horrifying student food I had fifteen years ago.

In Ho Chi Minh City, a so-so bowl of pho costs more than VND30,000.

But in Singapore, the steak was “not expensive because the price has been subsidized by the Singaporean government,” the canteen owner said.

They subsidize food not only for Singaporean students but also for foreign students.

This strange policy was quickly explained in a conversation with an NUS official. For foreign students, the Singaporean government subsidized not only food but also up to more than 80 percent of tuition fees.

Foreign students won’t have to pay for this subsidy, but after graduating, they will have to work at least 3 years for a Singaporean company.

After separating from Malaysia in 1965, Lee Kuan Yew said at a cabinet meeting that Singapore doesn’t have a lot of land; it doesn’t have any mineral resource, so the only way to make the country develop was to invest in its brains.

And if there is not enough brain-power of their own, the Singaporean government has a plan to use the talent from other countries.

The story related above is an example.

But the way they choose the right students to benefit from the subsidy is the most important thing we have to think about.

“We track them based on student records. After dozens of years we will know which school always produces high quality students,” an NUS official said. “Then we contact those schools, offer them scholarships to take their best students.”

Unless they can afford to study in US or European countries, the excellent students from the best high schools chose Singapore as their destination.

I am not sure if they will come back to work for the Vietnamese government after working for a Singaporean company for three years.

The young generation is our country’s future. Such policies are causing a brain-drain. That raises a big question. What will be the quality of future leaders of this country?

Coming back to the boxing bout, Tom King would have won if he had had a piece of steak.

And I know that a million steaks are available at campuses such as NUS.

By Ngoc Thinh Le