Trend
Decline of the engineer
Fears of Singapore heading towards becoming a high cost, low-tech
city are not unfounded. By Seah Chiang Nee.
Jun 14, 2008
AFTER
more than 10 years of building schools, a young friend, who is a
civil engineer, has put away his hard hat to become a teacher in a
secondary school.
It
was a big career switch for him and a loss to the profession. He
had graduated from Purdue University, one of the top engineering
schools in America.
Another
friend, an electronics engineer, distanced himself from his
computers and became a professional photographer.
These
are two cases that I am personally aware of in the decline of a
profession that was once considered the cornerstone of Singapore’s
development.
Many
engineers have moved into the more profitable financial sector or
sales and service jobs that are in greater demand.
It’s
happening in the legal profession, too. The number of lawyers in
Singapore has been in gradual but steady decline in the last few
years.
“The
attrition rate of lawyers is high, and the supply is not sufficient
given the rising demand here,” said a recent report.
This
professional decline is propelled by globalisation and the state’s
move into a service economy. It is beginning to worry parents who
sacrifice much to send their children for higher
education.
Some
engineers, I am told, are planning to get on the casino bandwagon.
Two mega gambling resorts are due to begin operation here in
2010.
With
more than a million foreigners working here in low-level work, this
decline is leading Singaporeans to wonder whether the city is
losing sight of its high-tech strategy.
Retired
civil servant Ngiam Tong Dow, for one, is worried that the country
may be heading towards a high cost, low-tech economy like London
and losing its competitiveness.
Britain’s
economic decline set in because ‘their best and brightest from
Oxbridge, instead of going into engineering and running factories,
went into the (financial) City of London’, he said.
“City
of London ... they are not creators of wealth, they are just
shuffling assets around the place,” Ngiam said.
This
had allowed the United States to overtake Britain because “while
some of their best went to Wall Street, their best still go into
engineering,” he added.
If
Singapore were to follow suit “I think we are done for”, said the
bureaucrat, who helped to pioneer Singapore’s economic
development
Recalling
the 1970s, Ngiam said: “I used to tell everybody, what I want is
1,000 engineers, 5,000 technicians from the polytechnics, and
10,000 Institute of Technical Education workers. ‘You give me that,
I grant you a job’.”
That
has worked only too well. At the peak 40% of the university
graduates were engineers.
Local
institutions were meeting domestic demand with “a steady pipeline
of 30,000 engineering and technical manpower each year”, a minister
said.
And
according to the Ministry of Manpower, the engineering-related
sector still provided the largest number of job vacancies over the
past two years.
In
2006, a third of the 3,639 top ten professional job vacancies were
in engineering, it said.
And
of the top 50 chief executives in Singapore, a third were engineers
by training. An official said there are more than 50,000 practising
engineers in Singapore, 50% of whom are women.
It
is not known how much of these rosy statistics were made up of
foreigners.
And
as casino gambling and tourism catches hold, the profession’s
future has become cloudier. Singaporeans will likely gravitate
towards better paying jobs, irrespective of their
training.
Interest
in engineering courses has already been dropping.
Five
years ago, 30% of the 16,000 polytechnic applicants chose
engineering as their first-choice course. Last year, only about 15%
of 18,000 students did so.
Foreigners
are, however, making up for the drop. One economist said: “We may
be facing a future where many of the developers of technology and
their managers will be foreigners.”
Singapore
is in transformation and there are few sacred cows that cannot be
slaughtered.
This
means Ngiam has a good reason to worry about the future of the
engineer.
In
his first major speech, new Education Minister Ng Eng Hen said:
“More education does not necessarily mean more growth, as most
politicians and economists unthinkingly suppose.”
At a
time when Singapore is planning a fourth university, Ng countered
the argument that having more universities stimulates economic
growth,
Tertiary
institutions, he said, should maintain a “focus on quality”, rather
than “expanding education thoughtlessly”.
Some
economists fear the government may be tempted by quick GDP growth
at the expense of building on its high-tech strategy when it
imports such a large number of cheap migrants.
Years
ago, under different circumstances, Singapore had vowed not to
allow itself to be addicted – like the Europeans – to cheap foreign
labour.
After
years of strong economic – and population – expansion the country
is where Europe is, having an army of low-skilled workers from
abroad.
Nearly
a million foreigners came, not to mention another 700,000 permanent
residents.
They
wait on tables, build our homes, clean our streets and perform
numerous tasks that keep the country going.
The
biggest change, however, is in government strategy, in the view of
some commentators.
Whatever
professional skill was needed in the past, the emphasis used to be
to train Singaporeans.
Today,
this need has all but gone. Instead to save time and money, the
government is turning to the world to tap its readily available
supply of professionals.
One
side effect isn’t pretty. While foreigners arrive in large numbers,
more of Singapore’s homebred talents are leaving to settle
abroad.
i think with globalization it is all the more important to
develop the only resource that we have i.e. singaporeans.
