Students in future should even be able to complete such programmes at their own time, if they have the desire and opportunity to intersperse their internship and studies.
SIT has also done well in building this connection. It is a pioneer of the applied learning model, which brings the university into the workplace, and allows students to learn by working with real-life tools to solve real-life industry problems.
Faculty is critical for this relationship between industry and universities. Universities must create more opportunities for faculty to keep pace with the latest industry innovations, and create free-flowing exchanges of ideas and personnel between industry and universities.
The autonomous universities, including SMU, already have a range of educators and researchers from full-time faculty, to those that straddle industry and academia, to adjunct lecturers. We must step up efforts to grow this diversity, including tapping more industry experts to serve as adjuncts and practice-track faculty.
As the universities rebalance their pre-employment training, or PET, and focus on Continuing Education & Training (CET), they will accordingly review their staffing composition.
This is necessary to better cater to the more diverse learner profiles and needs, including tailoring pedagogy, and especially andragogy, for our adult learners each year. PET methods cannot be applied to CET learners without appreciating the different opportunities and challenges of adult learners.
SUSS has done well in tailoring its curriculum to suit the needs of adult learners, with a “learn today, apply tomorrow” orientation.
It is a pioneer in recognising and awarding credit for the relevant skills and knowledge, which adult learners have picked up as part of their prior work experience.
And it adopts a blended mode of learning, with many online and mobile tools catering to work-study needs.
Faculty will need the necessary skills to help adult learners connect, collaborate, and create. For instance:
Lessons can take place both inside and outside the classroom, including in industry settings.
Lessons can be two-way, with faculty and adult learners sharing knowledge and perspectives.
Lessons need not be about solving yesterday’s problems with yesterday’s or today’s solutions only.
Instead, lessons will be more about bringing out the knowledge from all – faculties and learners together – to solve tomorrow’s challenges with new ideas and approaches.
20. For industry, instead of worrying that our students may graduate with the outdated or obsolete skills, why not reimagine industry going into academia, working with academia to ensure that the students are ready for the future?
Imagine a system where frontier industries and trade associations have “corporate labs” or other active collaborations with all our IHLs, co-creating the curricula of tomorrow, solving the challenges of tomorrow, and producing new products and services for tomorrow’s markets.
That will help make our industry and student-workers future ready concurrently, overcoming the risk of industry and worker transformation being out-of-sync.
21. The third dimension of connection to up our game is with our community.
Our universities can be more deeply integrated into our wider industry, business, and social eco-system. We have a responsibility to lead to help connect, collaborate and create.
This will help the universities better understand the challenges of our community, industry, and the world, for us to apply our knowledge, ideas, and skills to create better solutions for Singapore and the world.
Therefore, I encourage NTU not to see themselves as just a university in Jurong. But to aspire to have the NTU DNA of innovation and enterprise in every industry and company in Jurong. That NTU is the nervous system and catalyst of Jurong’s transformation.
Therefore, I encourage SMU not to see themselves as a university in the city centre. But instead to aspire to have the city in the SMU, where SMU inspires and leads the transformation of the city and businesses.
Similarly, SUTD must distinguish itself as the frontier for technological designs, using the east of Singapore with its focus on digital and design as its springboard to the world.
With the universities being “in the community, with the community, for the community”, we will be better able to attract the world’s talent to put our hands, hearts, and heads together to create the exciting future of tomorrow.
22. Finally, to better connect with the world, the industry and our community, the universities must do more to collaborate with each other and better build on one another’s strengths.
I have an aspiration where our six AUs operate as one team, leveraging each other’s strengths – from research to teaching and industrial collaboration.
An aspiration where students can take modules across different universities, like the Boston system.
An aspiration where our universities share more resources and combine faculty strengths to win projects to develop solutions for the world, the industries, and the community.
I am seeing promising signs in this direction. I will work with my team and all of you to make this happen faster, better, and tighter.
Confidence in Ourselves and Our Contributions
23. Let me now turn to the final ‘C’ – confidence.
Confidence in ourselves as individuals.
Confidence in ourselves as a people.
Confidence of our contributions to our society and the world.
24. Confidence in ourselves as individuals starts from understanding our strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This is as important as literacy and numeracy in our foundational years.
25. On the international stage, Singaporeans are often admired for our values and competencies.
However, many have also commented that we can better help our students express themselves so that their talents are better appreciated.
And help our students to better understand and appreciate the diversity of the world.
We will continue to increase opportunities for our people to be exposed to such skills and perspectives, beyond formal education or the university system.
This will be our lifelong pursuit.
26. The second aspect is confidence in ourselves as a people. In a world of contesting ideas, ideology, and values, we must have the confidence to chart our own destiny based on a pragmatic and disciplined search for what works best for our people in context, rather than be prisoners of ideology; and define our way of life based on our own set of values.
While we learn from the world, we must never relegate ourselves to just copying other people’s ideas without context.
We learn from others’ successes. We also learn from others’ failures.
But ultimately, we must have the confidence to develop our own solutions to our own unique challenges – be it in the economic or social spheres.
On the other hand, we must remain humble and recognise that we cannot stop learning and improving – as individual and as a country.
Our universities have a responsibility to nurture such values in our people – young and old.
27. The final source of confidence comes from understanding one’s contribution to society.
An individual’s fulfilment can never be just about how much we obtain from society or how well we do for ourselves only.
Instead, our fulfilment going forward must be a sense of contribution to our society, the world, and our Singaporean cause to defy the odds of history.
Ultimately, I hope this will also be the distinguishing identity of Singapore – where our people will not define success just by how well we do for ourselves only; but by how well we enable the next generation to do better than us.
28. Universities, having taken in the cream of the academically inclined crop, must certainly be expected to deliver students who can succeed in life.
But that’s not sufficient.
Universities must also continue to inculcate the mindset that students must define success beyond themselves.
That having had the opportunities they had, they should and must strive to enable success for the wider community, for Singapore and for future generations.
Conclusion
29. To all our students looking forward to the commencement of your university education, I will conclude today’s speech by sharing three reflections from my university journey.
This is also what I would like to tell my younger self if I were to walk the journey all over again.
30. Reflection #1 – University is neither the pinnacle nor end of learning. If we were to attend one, University is but one part of our lifelong pursuit of learning, wisdom, and contributions. What matters more than the grades that we obtain in university, is the foundation we will establish to learn for life, and to learn throughout life.
31. Reflection #2 – Learning is no longer simply the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Teaching is no longer just the transmission of knowledge and skills. Foundational learning will increasingly be self-paced, and adaptive. Time spent in class and with fellow learners and educators will increasingly be for connection, collaboration, and creation of new solutions for tomorrow’s challenges, rather than just solving known challenges with known solutions.
32. Reflection #3 – For Singapore to defy the odds of history, we will need the confidence to chart our own destiny and develop solutions for our unique challenges in context. Our universities and graduates have the responsibility to define success beyond oneself.
To lead with conviction
To excel with confidence
To overcome with tenacity and in unity.
33. Thank you.
Source: Ministry of Education, Singapore
