Matthew Tay during his time volunteering for a different bus company.
Matthew Tay
Despite college acceptances, Matthew Tay, 24, skipped school to become a bus-operations supervisor.
The straight-A student said it’s a misconception that working with buses is a dead-end job.
Our desire for paper qualifications can blind us to real opportunities, he added.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Matthew Tay, an operations supervisor in Singapore for Tower Transit, a local bus company. This essay has been edited for length and clarity. Insider verified his educational background, college acceptance letters, and employment details.
I grew up in Hougang, a neighborhood in northeast Singapore, near a now defunct bus interchange. When I was a kid, my parents took me around a lot to different bus interchanges, and it sparked my interest in collecting brochures about buses and drawing the vehicles.
When I was older, I joined a 400-member Facebook group called “Singapore bus enthusiasts.” I remember being the youngest person in the group.
Back then, buses were like Pokémon — you could catch only certain types of vehicles depending on which part of Singapore you were in.
Each weekend, the group would target places to go to hop onto some of these buses. Like in 2012, the last non-air-conditioned buses were found only in the far-west industrial areas of Tuas — a neighborhood in western Singapore — so the group headed there to experience what it was like to ride on a bus with no air conditioning.
I didn’t just tag along for bus-spotting trips but also collected memorabilia as I grew older.
I started collecting bus models from across the world when I was 12, and I now have over 30 models in my collection, each costing about 70 Singapore dollars, or about $50. I think I’ve spent about 2,000 Singapore dollars on them overall.
Over the past decade, I’ve also collected bus memorabilia such as seats, a giant bus electronic display, and even a bus dashboard. I salvaged many of these items by buying them from scrapyard workers and then restoring them. I think I’ve spent thousands of Singapore dollars on these, but I haven’t kept track.
Matthew Tay and his collection of bus memorabilia, which includes his bus models, salvaged bus number plates, and a bus electronic display he restored.
Matthew Tay
I was a top-scoring student, and people expected me to go to college. But I didn’t.
During my time in national service — Singapore’s military conscription for male citizens — I picked up bus driving on the weekends, volunteering with a company. That’s how I got the license to drive a bus.
That experience further fueled my passion for buses and made me realize that I shouldn’t go to college — I should start looking for jobs in the bus industry.
And that’s when I applied to Tower Transit Singapore, a local bus company that operates 59 bus services out of nine interchanges in Singapore where I now work as an operations supervisor. I joined the team in August 2022, and I help keep our facilities working and our buses on time.
Though it has been a dream job for me, my decision to skip college was shocking to some. That’s because I was accepted into Singapore’s top three universities — the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University, and the Singapore Management University — to get a bachelor’s degree in business, information systems, or public policy.
My classmates were surprised — they all expected me to attend college because of how well I scored. I was a straight-A student, and my GPA in polytechnic, or Singapore’s equivalent to a vocational high school, was a nearly perfect 3.99 out of 4.
When my lecturers found out, they even messaged me saying a university degree was something I should seriously consider in the future, if not then.
Now I’m the behind-the-scenes guy who keeps things running
As an operations supervisor, I work in shifts.
I start the morning shift at 5 by checking our facilities to make sure they’re working fine, setting up our passenger service office, making sure the first buses depart on time, and coordinating the shifts and work of our bus captains.
I chose to work in operations because it’s like the artery of the company — essential for keeping things running.
It’s also a very social job. I know many of the over 700 bus drivers we have in our company. As a huge bus enthusiast, I love working up close with bus captains and their buses every day.
People think that bus driving and working in the bus industry is a dead-end job or mostly for middle-aged people, but that’s not true.
Our rush to get a degree can sometimes blind us to opportunities
Tay working as an operations supervisor with Tower Transit
Matthew Tay/Tower Transit
In Singapore, there’s a common perception that paper qualifications — such as a university degree — are key to getting a stable job and a good starting salary.
As an operations supervisor, I’m comfortable with the salary I make and don’t feel like I’m under financial pressure. For transparency, I still live with my parents and don’t have to pay rent. (Editor’s note: Tay declined to divulge his annual salary to Insider. According to Insider’s review of salary ranges posted on the anonymous-reviews site Glassdoor and the jobs portal Indeed, bus-operations managers typically earn between 2,000 and 3,000 Singapore dollars monthly, depending on their experience.)
I’m thankful that I didn’t buy into that rat race.
In a country as focused on education and paper qualifications as Singapore, what I did was unusual, but I don’t regret it one bit.
And if I want to change my route later, the door to college is still open.