Singapore Officials Envision "Boston of the East"

This article by Eric Montlake is from The Christian Science Monitor, and describes Singapore's goal to establish itself as an Eastern center of brains and education to rival Boston, Massachusetts:

Over the past decade, Singapore has courted foreign universities with subsidies and partnerships, and showered aid on promising overseas students. It aims to create an education hub for students in Asia who want an international degree but may not have the income or the grades to study in the West. It has targeted an enrollment of 150,000 foreign students by 2015, up from about 80,000 currently.

These ambitions mirror the rapid growth in global education. The number of students studying abroad rose to 2.7 million in 2005, up from 1.3 million a decade earlier, according to a study released in September by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The most popular destination is the US, followed by Britain and Australia.

But Singapore's program to reverse this flow by outsourcing world-class education to its shores has run into trouble.