You go to a wet market, and in a tucked-away corner you happen to find the cheapest and best eggs. The pound-for-pound, in other words.
You believe you’ve uncovered gem, assured of quality yet economical eggs for, say, the next couple of months.
The next day, however, the stall owners relocate to the centre of the marketplace, and hike up their prices. All upon your feedback.
Such a move isn’t wrong. But somehow, it doesn’t feel right either.
That’s when the touchy region of ethics is being manoeuvred. Ever so grey, ethics guide the morals and conduct of a people, yet often have no binding effect on their actions. It is a self-policing system.
Transplant the capitalistic egg business to the internship process in Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Before I enlighten you on the resulting controversy, let me explain how it works.
Students go away for an internship during their enrolment with the university at a company either of their choosing or by allocation. There is a list every year from which they can pick. At the school’s and companies’ discretion, individuals are invited for interviews or sometimes offered spots immediately.
However, there is a special round before all of the abovementioned when students can source for their own companies, for various reasons. It could be they have the relevant contacts, or wish to avoid the imminent cluster, or want to do something specific outside of ‘the list’.
At least two counts of a similar incident have called into question the behaviour of corporations and, by extension, the long-existing flaws of the much-maligned NTU administration.
What if I put in the time and energy to source for a company of my own and for myself, carry through the administrative and logistical procedures, but end up, to my surprise, seeing that company join ‘the list’, which everyone is entitled to, as a result of my efforts?
Note, I’ve not even been accepted nor given priority to a place.
These companies merely acted with their own interests at heart, deciding to submerge themselves in the wider sea of talent, where the best fishermen use the best tackle.
But in opening up their options, they’ve ignored courtesy where it’s due. They were uninformed (or misinformed), and it was those very internship-chasing undergrads who had informed them.
The nature of things in a capitalistic society has left the students with… Nothing. Kaput. GG.
Selfish reasons aside, this also isn’t natural, is it?
But what can be done? The students - the fee-paying clients of the university - are unfortunately in a lose-lose situation.
The system is flawed, and whoever they raise their grievances to, be it the school or the company, they risk incurring the wrath of the latter, putting their job application in jeopardy.
We can ask them to 'do the right thing', but that's certainly too much to expect of these young men and women.
Because NTU cannot control the actions of companies, the least it can do, in my opinion, is to prepare 'the list' early for the students' reference. The students would be able to assess the choices and plan self-sourcing accordingly.
Currently, this list is only finalised just before the application period, with companies still able to move in and out of it at their discretion. Students, on the other hand, will for weeks only have the previous year's list to guide them, which is often an inaccurate one.
NTU has to stop being wishy-washy and stand their ground. After all, if companies genuinely want interns, they should meet deadlines, and if students labour to self-source, they probably deserve the spots more.
The well-known Soviet spy Kim Philby once said, "To betray you must first belong." The ambiguity of this controversy lies in whether those internship organisations in question ever 'belonged' to those students.
There is a fine line between ethical and practical. When a company low-blows undergrads like that, the shame is on who?
The wet market, the egg seller, or my industriousness?
