Singapore or bust: how Indonesian student’s crowdfunding plea shows degree of desirability

For 28-year-old Indonesian professional Evelyn Clarissa Siregar, asking strangers to help fund her MBA in Singapore was a gamble: she knew the request was unconventional but hoped putting her dream out in public might open a door.

Instead, her appeal for more than S$100,000 (US$78,000) to fund her business programme at Singapore Management University (SMU) drew fierce online criticism, with some labelling her entitled and questioning her plans.

“I never expected the backlash to become this big,” Siregar told This Week in Asia, saying she felt “overwhelmed” by the response.

“Once I finally had the capacity to face everything again, I went back and read all [their] comments and responses. One by one. I cringed, feeling uncomfortable.”

But Siregar said the experience had not changed her desire to study in Singapore. The city state continues to attract Indonesians with its high-ranking universities, proximity and reputation – even though the cost can put a degree there beyond many students’ reach.

“Singapore is a small country, but it’s packed with experts in finance, business and science,” said Siregar, who works as a sales manager at an internet services provider in Jakarta. “Everything feels within reach. That’s what really attracts me to Singapore.”

On September 16, Siregar was accepted into SMU’s MBA programme, which will start in January and require S$82,480 in tuition. She secured a S$3,000 Asean student discount but that was “far from enough”, she said.

The price tag is particularly stark for an Indonesian student. SMU’s S$82,480 tuition works out to about 1.15 billion rupiah. By comparison, the School of Business and Management at Indonesia’s well-regarded Institut Teknologi Bandung lists total tuition of 99.15 million rupiah for its General Management MBA.

Siregar said she had applied for three scholarships but secured only one. She also tried to apply for a job in Singapore, but nothing panned out. “In my [MBA] application, I’ve stated that I wouldn’t rely on my parents financially and that I would rely heavily on scholarships and internships or part-time work,” she said.

Three days after receiving her acceptance, she published a pitch on Instagram asking internet users to fund her study and living expenses, which she estimated would cost “S$2,000-S$2,500 per month, for 10-15 months”. Siregar wrote that she would pay back her investors with her “skills and experiences”.

“I’ve always believed in negotiation. If someone says no, I don’t necessarily take it as the end,” she said.

Her pitch ultimately brought no sponsors, but it did bring a barrage of criticism, as commenters questioned her credentials and the feasibility of her plan.

“As someone who invests in a lot of business, you are all talk. There is no fixed guarantee if you can replace the capital I spent … you are just a kid with entitled behaviour. No numbers, no return on investment. We all have dreams; know the boundaries if you can’t afford it,” one social media user said.

“Why not come to Singapore, work for a few years, and earn enough to go for a master’s? Isn’t that probably a better approach? That’s what most locals here do instead of asking for a donation based on a pitch with zero return,” another said.

Sought-after destination

Singapore’s appeal to Siregar lies not just in its universities but in the access she believes studying there could provide. That aspiration is shared by other Indonesian students, although their routes can look very different.

Tri Maira Pangestuti, who graduated in August from a master’s programme in environmental management at the National University of Singapore (NUS), received an Indonesian government scholarship in 2022 as her mother is a farmer raising three children on her own in a village in Central Java.

She was also accepted into a master’s programme in Sydney, but chose NUS because “it was ranked the eighth best university in the world at that time”, she said.

Studying at NUS yielded professional benefits, from acquiring practical skills closely tied to industrial needs, such as conducting environmental risk assessments for international supply chains, to receiving strong backing from her academic advisers for her PhD applications, the 28-year-old said.

“I really want to be a professor at NUS. I’m currently applying for a PhD at Stanford University and the University of Helsinki in Finland. I don’t know which university will accept me, but I plan to return to Singapore as an assistant professor after receiving my PhD,” Tri said.

Tri, who uses a prosthetic as her left eye is blind, said she also appreciated how NUS accommodated her disability – for example, by giving her an additional 25 minutes during exams.

“In Indonesia, I attended public schools from kindergarten to undergraduate, never a school specifically for children with disabilities. In ninth grade, my gym teacher held back my report card because I couldn’t swim. The gym teacher didn’t provide any learning adjustments,” Tri said.

NUS ranks third as the foreign university destination for Indonesian students, Kompass newspaper reported in May 2024. As of 2022, there are 2,282 NUS alumni from Indonesia, 769 of whom graduated from the business studies programme.

Sulfikar Amir, associate professor at the School of Social Sciences at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, said many Indonesian students were drawn to the city state because of its reputation as an elite educational hub and the availability of scholarships from the government, universities and corporations.

“Singaporean universities offer world-class infrastructure and educational facilities, which are on a par with, and sometimes even better than, universities in the US, Britain and elsewhere in Europe,” Sulfikar said.

“There’s also added value … because Singapore’s culture is relatively similar to Indonesia. Students can still experience warmth, unlike in cold and individualistic Europe.”

For Siregar, the path towards a Singaporean degree remains uncertain. Though she has yet to receive any sponsors from her pitch, that had not stopped her from pursuing “other passions and stories”.

“I’ve put my dream out there, and if anyone wants to follow along, that’s great,” she said. “But I’m more than my MBA journey.”