More than one in two tenured faculty members at SMU, NUS and NTU are Singaporeans, while one in five tenured faculty members at SUTD is Singaporean. For non-tenured faculty members, about half of them in SMU, NUS, and NTU are Singaporeans. Senior Minister of State for Education Indranee Rajah shared these figures in response to a question from SMU Assistant Professor of Law and NMP Eugene Tan who asked if the government has any specific plans to develop and nurture more Singapore citizen faculty members in the universities. Assistant Prof Tan said he was disappointed by the low figures, pointing out that the majority of tenured and non-tenured faculty members teaching in universities here are not Singaporeans. He said: "I am very concerned about the tenure track faculty because the majority are not Singaporeans. So going forward, you are going to have tenured faculty in our universities where the proportion of Singaporeans would be even lower. So at the moment it is one in two for most of the universities. But I think going forward, given the lower numbers in the tenure track scheme, that would mean that there could be problems ahead when it comes to tenured faculty. I think we need to have a more concerted effort to develop local talent. And I certainly hope that my call here is not for deferential or preferential treatment, but rather a level playing field." In response, Ms Indranee agreed that a strong Singaporean core should be developed in the area of academia.