What goes around comes around — and in the case of 50-year-old mechanic John Shu, it’s kindness that makes the world go round. When he met 32-year-old Jaycie Tay in 2013 at a chance encounter, the duo struck up a friendship that led to him offering her about $6,000 to pay for her diploma. Her back story included incarceration for drug offences and dropping out of school, but the twice-divorced mum of four — whose previous jobs included low-paying positions as a waitress and a retail assistant — wanted to get a diploma at Kaplan Singapore for a better shot at giving her kids a good future.
Except she didn’t have the money to pay for the course fees. So Shu, whose monthly income was just over $2,000, gave her what he had. He claimed that him and his wife, who worked as a hawker, could live on their income.
In 2014, Tay graduated with a diploma in marketing management from Kaplan Higher Education Institute. Her story (and Shu’s) was covered in The Straits Times, and when Kaplan heard about his kind act, the school decided to do a good deed of its own and surprise him by sponsoring about $20,000 for the tertiary education of his 21-year-old daughter.
Kaplan will reimburse her entire polytechnic education, which is worth somewhere between $8,000 and $9,000, and contribute about $10,000 to her university degree.
