By Jason Zhou

AT THE risk of being flogged, I find students in Europe generally more worldly and mature than their Singaporean counterparts.

I have been in Vienna for close to five months as an exchange student, and already, what I learnt here from my peers is probably more than I ever did during my three years in university back home.

For example, I was impressed by how robust in-class discussions were.

In a class on European Law and Economics, meek-looking peers became the talk of the town when they articulated their viewpoints passionately and lucidly in class.

It was not uncommon for a student to stand up, identify himself, and respectfully voice dissent and present views quite contrary to those offered by the lecturer. It was thoroughly refreshing for me to be exposed to new ideas every day, and debate how to negotiate the tricky meanderings of economic policy and law.

Class participation here is not the usual regurgitation of past theses from professors - it is critical viewpoints borne out of sheer interest in world knowledge that are full of rigour and substance. This is the kind of class participation that I find lacking in universities back home.

To add to my respect for my peers here, what they lack in age, they make up for in knowledge. I have had a 20-year-old Dutch friend lecture me on the dangers of political apathy over a meal, and another 21-year-old German student debate with me the pros and cons of capitalism and socialism.

The German left the most indelible mark in my mind - our debate spanned several dinners and, in the end, it ended in a stalemate because he had to leave to join a student protest against the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

Through these discussions, it became evident to me why students here were held in high regard by the rest of society: They are informed champions of various causes, and they potentially can make very worthy change in their communities.

Perhaps such robust student interest and knowledge stem from the high mobility that is characteristic of the European Union. Students come from all over, representing a wide spectrum of political views. Intellectual discourse also comes more naturally.

In Singapore, we still have much catching up to do with our worldly European counterparts in terms of knowledge and discussion. But I am encouraged by the fact that foreign students from all over Asia are joining our universities increasingly.

They could offer the different perspectives that will make in-class discussions more diverse, robust and interesting.

This is the kind of peer learning that I am looking forward to when I return for the new school term - the kind that involves not only helping one another study for exams, but also sharing in the plurality of perspectives from the diversity of our peers.

Jason Zhou, 23, is a third-year economics student from Singapore Management University.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.