Today, I have officially informed in my boss about leaving in April 2027.

To be honest, after letting him know, I felt a weight off my shoulders. The road to this decision has been eating me for a long time and after a run this trimester, I have firmly decided that it's time to make my exit.

And I think it's a good time to reflect here about my decision and look back at this career.

I apologize for the word vomit in advance.

Just for context for anyone reading, I have been teaching in DigiPen Singapore for more than 5 years as a faculty in Computer Science. I mostly teach aspiring designers programming and also manage project modules for freshmen software engineers-in-the-making. I should also mention that I was also an alumni of the school, so there is some level of attachment involved.

Another thing that's relevant is that DigiPen Singapore is 'under' the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) as an external partner. Generally speaking, SIT funds DigiPen and subsidizes prospective students. (I was the first cohort of such benefits back then but that's not really relevant).

One thing that DigiPen was good at was having a rigorious programme that focuses on fundamentals of software engineering. As a former student, I always believed that the training I got in the "old days" set me up to be really good in my craft that's only limited by my procrastination and laziness. The issue was that the attrition rate is ridiculously high. I remember a 4 page attendence sheet became 1 just in the second trimester. However, employment was great and companies spoke highly about students who graduated from DigiPen.

So that's the history.

When I returned as a lecturer, DigiPen was still somewhat rigorous. There are numerous small things I observed which I felt contribute to the lowering of standards and low student morale, like how some lecturers design their rubrics, but that's better left as a seperate discussion.

Thinking back, things probably started to be notably worse when SIT started to step in. Mind you, they weren't unreasonable demands at the high level, but the implementation they and we do at the end of the day is...not great. And I'm part of the problem.

For example. One thing they wanted was to increase intake. My design module went from ~30 students to 50+ students. My project modules went from 180 students to 280 students. This obviously meant more money for the school (both DigiPen and SIT), but the amount of lecturers more or less remains the same.

To cope, we have to worry about scalability. The most immediate problem is grading assessments. Some lecturers did not scale successfully and end up on the firing range. Some with more political leverage did not scale but managed to ask for less responsibilities. Some converted all individual assessments to group projects. Some ended up automating whatever we can. This is what I did for my programming modules, which is now fully automated. Things are that not automatable are streamlined to be easier so that work is easier to distribute between instructors with different schemas.

Lecturing is another problem. Now, lectures for classes with 200+ students are typically online unless you are crazy enough to repeat the same lecture across different sections physically, because there isn't a classroom big enough to fit everyone. SIT encourage the use of 'Blended Learning', so some lecturers employ flipped classroom where they record their lectures, in my experience, no one bothers to watch. Some lecturers can't adapt to either and end up on the firing board.

At the end of the day, whether you adapted successfully or not, it is impossible for lecturers to keep track of that many students and to me that's depressing. Pretending that I recognize a student is exhausting. It is extremely rare that I could match a name to a face. When I look at graphs and spreadsheets of names and grades, I inevitable caught myself seeing students as numbers and statistics.

And that's one thing that was eating me inside every year. There are many moment where I step back, look at how I see the students on the spreadsheet, how I interact with them physically and go...what's the point? If everything's automated and I'm just following through my motions, and all my efforts are just to make stats look good instead of actually caring about every student's outcomes, then what am I doing here? If I didn't care, I might as well retire in a polytechnic. If I care, I might as well teach in an enrichment center or start my own tuition center.

There are other factors as well other than scale. SIT kind of want to see student grades as a curve and if it isn't, it needs to be justified. SIT also doesn't want us to fail a student without a good reason.

The thing is, answering why you fail each and every student that does not pass your course every year (and there are many students) is just...tiring. It is hard to say "they did not pass the assessments" because SIT will suggest that "maybe the assessments are too hard then". Furthermore, we were given the message that SIT does not receive money if a student do not graduate, so logically we should try our best not to fail students and give them a chance.

I mean, there's many angles you can talk about this. For instance, you even reason that it's not fair for a student to pay tuition just to fail even after putting some amount of effort. Whatever reason the instructors chose to sleep well at night, the direction is clear: let's pass students unless we can find a REALLY strong and undeniable reason to fail them. Thus, the bar to fail students is shockingly low.

For example, in knowledge-based modules like math or programming, if you attend classes, and hand up your take-home assessment or even take-home quizzes, you would've scored enough to get a D, which is under CGPA but a pass. Then you do your closed-book exams and that's where you'll see if you fall within the Cs Bs or As. The point is, you can't fail for doing badly for any closed-book exams anymore. You just see whether you can boost your GPA. The 'threat' is little different.

On top of that, a part of me can't help but think that if I helped students too much, I will skew the curve towards an A, which...I have to end up justifying too.

Then there's IWSP, which is the internship thing that SIT wants to impose on students. This...is probably an article on it's own. Pretty much, what I'm seeing is the school metaphorically shedding blood of the students. There were lots of ridiculous demands from the students on top of them working full time. I tried to fight back but ultimately, I had to fall in line because clearly me raising my voice is just causing trouble for my company (DigiPen) and making them look bad in front of SIT, and despite SIT saying that they will take my feedback, nothing is done. Nothing.

And I understand that my boss wants me to fall in line.

Don't get me wrong, I respect my boss and he's nice enough to allow me to work from Japan. But I do know that he's falling in line for SIT and not fighting back. And he wants me to fall in line too.

And honestly, I don't think I can.

It's like...I have to supervise some of these students and I'm just watching them suffer unreasonably and just saying stuff to them I don't truly believe...like what kind of snake oil am I selling?

So I give up.

It's just not fulfilling nor interesting anymore.

I'm done.