“Universities’ Mission in Lifelong Learning”
Professor Tan Eng Chye, President, NUS
Ladies and Gentlemen
1. A very good morning to all joining us in-person, and online.
2. Let me first thank NUS for organising the inaugural Lifelong Learning Festival, and announcing the suite of measures to provide both NUS alumni and the general public with more opportunities, and encourage them to learn throughout life.
3. This Festival is part of our ongoing SkillsFuture Festival to promote and support lifelong learning.
4. Today, I only have two short messages to share.
First, the roles of our Autonomous Universities (AUs) have evolved and must now include lifelong learning in their mission. And I’ll explain why this is significant.
Second, the ways we organise ourselves for lifelong learning must also evolve. Let me now elaborate on these two short messages.
Lifelong Learning – an Integral Part of AUs’ Mission
5. First, conventionally, the mission of our AUs includes research and teaching to prepare students for the job markets.
These two roles – research and teaching – remain relevant and necessary.
However, as the leading research institutions and the brain trusts of our society, all our AUs must also take on the role of Institutions of Continual Learning, providing opportunities for our workforce to upgrade and stay relevant.
Our AUs must also partner our industries to help them transform. The tighter our Research, Innovation and Enterprise cycle, the more competitive we become.
So, we expect three roles from our universities – research, teaching and lifelong learning. Our six universities each have a role to play in these three aspects, and will all contribute based on their strengths.
6. During the recent International Academic Advisory Panel (IAAP) hosted by SM Tharman, leaders from many leading universities around the world affirmed this role that universities have to play in the lifelong learning landscape.
The question was never about whether the universities should be involved in lifelong education.
Instead, the questions were how to do it, do it well, and do it in a timely manner.
7. In Singapore, we are adopting the perspective where we do not just invest in the first 15 years of an individual’s formal schooling, but we also invest in the next 50 years of his working life.
This shift is well under way. The number of adult learners trained by our Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) has more than doubled from around 165,000 in 2018 to 345,000 in 2020.
Significantly, NUS has graduated 7,000 undergraduates and 5,500 post-graduates this year.
We can all imagine the trajectory of these two numbers.
One is likely to remain stable or fall slightly with the cohort size.
Another is likely to continue to rise further.
No prizes for guessing which trend refers to which. But there is certainly a penalty if we get it wrong.
Hence, we need to do more.
How Universities Can Enhance Support for Lifelong Learning
8. Let me now touch on the second issue – of how and what we need to do, and do better.
9. The many degrees and post-degree programmes that the AUs are offering for our adult learners are good, necessary but not sufficient.
10. We will need to think of doing more and better in the following ways:
11. First, we must continue to curate more modules to meet the needs of our adult learners, to keep pace with industry transformation.
Now, this requires the academia and industry to tighten our knowledge cycle between frontier industrial practices and adult lifelong learning pedagogy and andragogy. The institutions cannot do this alone, neither can the industries.
We will need our industries, trade associations and professional bodies to articulate and aggregate their demand for new skills for us to activate the supply of new training by our institutions, including our AUs.
There is still quite a significant gap in our offerings versus what our industries need, both in terms of the range and diversity of courses, and the speed at which we are required to deliver them.
So, first, we need to expand our offerings and improve their timeliness. We need to shorten the cycle from when demand is aggregated to when the supply is activated, and the training is completed. And in today’s fast-paced world, this loop needs to be completed in months, and not years.
12. Second, we have to move beyond conventional full qualifications such as diplomas, degrees, and post-degree programmes.
We are already expanding our part-time courses and work-study programmes,
But we need to complement these with a more modular approach to deliver bite-sized, just-in-time modules, or what we call micro-credentials.
This requires a mindset shift on the parts of the individual, industry and our institutions.
For the individuals, we must appreciate the value of such modules beyond the longer-form diplomas and degrees of the past that we are used to.
For the industry, we must also accept such micro-credentials as part of the new skills landscape. The ability to articulate the specific skills required will be much more important than just using a general diploma or degree as a proxy of one’s general capabilities. Our industries will need to acquire the skillsets to articulate such new demands in a sharper and more timely manner.
For institutions, we must redesign our curriculum and delivery methods to allow our adult learners to not only return to school, but to always have the school in their pockets. And we need to combine the best of both worlds with physical interactions and hybrid formats, where people can acquire knowledge virtually anytime, anyplace, on any topic.
13. Third, we must also appreciate the individuals’ desire for some form of conventional diplomas and degrees as a milestone of their personal accomplishment, at some point in time. This is particularly so for Asian societies.
This requires us to make our modules more stackable.
This requires us to re-imagine our overall system where we can stack modules not just within an institution like NUS, but even across different institutions.
And we will need to work on this.
Our 6 AUs, 5 Polytechnics and ITE must compete as a system like Boston,
Where there is cross recognition of one another’s modules, and opportunities for our students and adult learners to take modules across institutions.
So, our institutions must work together to complement each other’s modules.
These are new ways we must reimagine our separate training system as one integrated training system.
14. Now, this vision that I described is achievable.
In fact, it has already started for the undergraduate level today. Under the Singapore Universities Student Exchange Programme (SUSEP), NUS, NTU, SMU, SUSS and SUTD have a reciprocal agreement to offer student exchange programmes.
Under this agreement, an undergraduate student at an AU can study and experience student life at another AU for up to one semester during the four years of undergraduate education.
But we can extend this, and imagine one day where our adult learners can pick and choose their modules across all our institutions and stack them if they want to do so.
15. Our competition is not with one another, but we are all competing against the wider global lifelong learning market that offers a plethora of courses and modules. Our lifelong learners are not constrained by just the offerings in Singapore. In fact, some of the best offerings from across the world, from the MITs of the world to the leading European universities and many more, are offering such modules not just to their domestic learners, but across the world. So, we need to up our game.
Partnering Alumni in Lifelong Learning Journey
16. As our universities grow into Institutes of Continual Learning, it is heartening to see them partnering their alumni and industry in this lifelong learning journey
Just now, NUS President shared that the doors to continual learning at NUS will always be open to all learners, including alumni. I would like to commend and affirm NUS for taking the lead in this, and for taking a proactive approach to encourage its alumni and the wider Singapore community to embark on this lifelong journey.
Graduates can and will naturally approach their alma mater as a first port of call whenever they need skills upgrading over the course of their careers.
The lifelong learning benefits that NUS President announced earlier will serve to strengthen this relationship that NUS has with its alumni, as NUS enhances its slate of offerings to all adult learners.
But, this must go beyond NUS. One day, I hope to see all our IHLs adopting the same approach to maintain a lifelong relationship with their alumni, be they students who are graduating from our AUs, Polytechnics or ITEs. One day, I hope that all Singaporeans will actively access the opportunities and training modules offered by our IHLs, where they can pick and choose modules, and design their own curriculum to achieve their lifelong learning objectives.
Conclusion
17. Finally, I would just like to encourage ourselves to always remember this: the competitiveness of our people and country has never and will never depend on the size of our land, or the abundance of our resources.
18. Instead, the competitiveness of Singapore and Singaporeans will always be about the speed of our evolution.
19. Whoever can organise their lifelong learning system best to complement their early years and foundational school system, will win in the next lap of global competition.
20. If any country or system can do this well, Singapore must be one of them.
21. So, let us work together to re-envision how we are going to provide support for our entire population to upskill and reskill at scale. Our challenge is never about just producing a cohort of 30 or 40,000 graduates a year from our IHLs. It is that, plus reskilling half a million or more adult learners every year to keep pace with the competition. And with the help of institutions like our AUs and the industry partners, I have every confidence we will get there.
22. Thank you very much for your contribution.
Source: Ministry of Education, Singapore