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Private degree programmes in Singapore: a side-by-side comparison

By the editor · Singapore PR·7 min read·Last checked 18 Oct 2026

If you are choosing between private institutions for a degree, the hard part is that every one of them presents itself well and none of them publishes the same information in the same place. This page lines up what each publishes, says where a figure is old, and says plainly where I could not verify something.

Before you read. This is personal experience and opinion, not education or financial advice. Fees and certifications change: most of the figures below were checked directly in September and October 2026, but the Length column for PSB Academy and MDIS, and the Fees figure for James Cook University, still trace back to an April 2024 third-party guide because I could not verify those specific numbers on an institution’s own page. Every institution should be checked directly before you pay anything. The “last checked” date is at the top.

For the wider decision, polytechnic against private institution against university, and the checks before you pay, start with studying in Singapore. This page is only the side-by-side.

The comparison

Institution Partners Length Fees (international, 2026 example) EduTrust (register, 4 Sep 2026)
SIM Global Education University of London and others, including La Trobe, RMIT and Birmingham Not stated S$46,155 for a standard-entry BSc (Economics and Finance), 3 years Active, EduTrust Star 4-Year, to 19 Aug 2030
Kaplan Birmingham City, Monash, Murdoch, Northumbria, UCD, Portsmouth 9 to 18 months on the routes listed S$34,182 tuition (about S$36,000 with admin and application fees) for a 16-month double major, 2026 intake Active, EduTrust 4-Year, to 19 Nov 2027
PSB Academy Newcastle (Australia), Coventry, La Trobe, Hertfordshire, Edinburgh Napier, Edith Cowan 1 to 2 years, most courses S$25,898 to S$51,797 for Newcastle’s Bachelor of Business, depending on entry year/module exemptions Active, EduTrust 4-Year, to 13 May 2030
MDIS Sunderland, Teesside, Bangor, Edinburgh, Northumbria and others 27 months for Psychology S$19,075 for a 9-month top-up; S$50,685 for a 3-year BSc (Biomedical Sciences) before any scholarship Active, EduTrust 4-Year, to 29 Mar 2027
James Cook University Singapore JCU Australia (campus owned by it) 24 months, plus 12 for honours S$62,130 to S$64,746 Active, EduTrust Star 4-Year, to 09 Apr 2027
Curtin Singapore Curtin delivers its own courses Not stated Charged per unit Active, EduTrust 4-Year, to 03 May 2027

Read it as a map of what is published, not a ranking. Where a cell says “not stated” or “not verified”, it means I looked and the page I could open did not say.

How much of this is current

The Fees column now comes from one real, named programme per institution, read directly off each institution’s own fee page in October 2026, for the international-student rate specifically (not the Singapore-citizen/PR rate, which is usually lower). It is a worked example, not a quote for the course you want: every institution runs dozens of programmes at different prices, several only publish international fees once you pick a specific course and entry year on their site, and some top-up programmes (shorter, built for diploma holders already in Singapore) simply don’t offer an international rate at all — Kaplan’s psychology top-up is one such case. SIM’s, Kaplan’s, PSB Academy’s and MDIS’s fee figures are mine, checked directly; JCU’s and Curtin’s come from the sources already cited.

The Length column is a separate check: Kaplan’s comes from its own October 2026 open-house page, and Curtin’s and SIM’s are marked “not stated” because I could not find a stated length on either institution’s own pages. PSB Academy’s and MDIS’s length figures, along with JCU’s fee figure, are the ones still carried over from the April 2024 third-party guide (Dollars and Sense) rather than confirmed on an institution’s own page.

Curtin Singapore’s student fees page (last modified 17 December 2025) also lists an administration fee of S$872 for international students and prices tuition per unit, on a normal load of 100 credits a trimester; JCU’s February 2026 brochure prices its pre-university programmes but not its degrees, which is why its table figure is still the older third-party estimate. None of this is a quote. Ask each institution for a written fee schedule for the exact course, including the fee protection arrangements and the refund table.

EduTrust: what it tells you and what it does not

EduTrust is a quality certification scheme for private education institutions, administered by SkillsFuture Singapore (it now describes the scheme as run by the Skills & Workforce Development Agency, a name change since SkillsFuture Singapore’s 2019 factsheet). Institutions’ own pages are not the authority on this: the official register is SkillsFuture Singapore’s PEI Course Directory on TPGateway, which lists every registered private education institution’s current registration validity, EduTrust status, award type, certificate number and award history. The figures below are from that directory, dated 4 September 2026, not from the institutions’ own marketing pages.

All six are currently Active:

An institution’s own page not stating a current EduTrust status — Kaplan’s case above — is not proof it lost the award; it may just be an unupdated page. And the register itself is a snapshot, dated 4 September 2026 above: always check it again for the date you are reading this, since awards expire and renew on their own schedule.

What the qualification is worth to employers

This is the part a website cannot settle by reading institutions’ own pages, and I am not going to invent it. What I can say from the table is structural: the name that matters on the certificate is usually the partner university’s, so what a given degree is worth depends on the awarding university and the course as much as on where you sat the classes. Ask each institution, in writing, who awards the degree and whether you receive the partner university’s certificate.

In my own experience, holding a PEI degree hasn’t been a practical obstacle. But the pattern I’ve seen in my circle is that the big tech firms and larger corporates lean toward hiring NUS or NTU graduates over PEI graduates when both are on the table; at diploma level that preference is much weaker. The gap shows up most clearly at the starting salary: people I know graduating from NUS or NTU in 2025 were starting around S$5,000+ a month, against roughly S$3,500–4,000 for PEI graduates. That is a small, informal sample from the people around me, not a survey, so don’t treat it as a baseline for your own offer.

Questions to ask before you pay

Where to verify

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