Has government neglected practical broad-based education?

robertteh SG

The practical knowledge application contents referred to can be found in various courses taught in polytehnics where the teaching is to equip students with projects or trades skills so as to prepare them to go into businesses and be entrepreneurs one day.

To a certain extent, certain courses at the university e.g. medicine, architecture, civil/structural engineering too prepares student to be their own bosses one day. Medicine and lawyers now dominate our courses but these do not spin our export-drives to earn foreign exchange. Many such traditional courses only serve us in domestic consumption which is not giving us the value-added technology-driven new competitive edge.

Vocational institutes and ITE too and many private schools offering trade-related courses will equip students of all streams to do well in life.

Academic education e.g. general science, art, sociology, economics and many others have been taught for years and students from such faculties cannot find jobs easily or set up their own business, trade practices etc or new technology start-ups. We have now too many traditionally trained lawyers who cannot do much in technology areas except to be ligitious or adminster but the latter workers are seldom able to contribute much in new technology environment.

We are critically short of business-oriented talents and entrepreneurs to start new industries of the future which require knowledge workers in such areas such as IT designers, bio-tech researchers and new-age nano-engineers and professionals.

By changing the academic type of uni education to technology driven types of courses and equipping students with applications and knowledge on start-ups of ventures, we can create more future new ventures from new talents who will be good in starting new businesses and trades.

vito_corleone SG

that's not the government's fault that people dont start big businesses...its the people that can't or are unwilling to take risks to do so Laughing and have you ever considered political factors? if there were so many huge local businesses to challange the GLC's...where the hell would the government exploit...*ehhmm... make their money from? large businesses mean political influence and surely the dynasty doesnt want any challange to their influence.. Laughing and have u been to university? a university course is also a largely academic one with lectures, tutorials, reports, thesis etc...if not where the hell are you going to get knowledge if not from books? you think so much opportunity to intern here and there ah? like this might as well go and work. Laughing

robertteh SG

I think you have missed my point. I am not suggesting that the government is totally wrong. People have their shortcomings. But education can be more creative and holistic keeping an eye on preparing students to become more entrepreneurial and ready to start up his own trades or businesses.

Such an education system whether at the uni or poly will go a long way towards making the economy competitive.

Any objection to such a suggestion? If we do not recognise our shortcoming and introduce improvements to our academic education system as posted with examples, we might be caught with structural unemployment as feared by many people. If there is something the government can do to make the education system more relevant to the needs of industries and jobs whey not?

My suggestion stems largely from my observation that many of our engineers and professions do not practise what they have learned and such knowledge or degrees as they have acquired are in a way wasted.

Had they started in schools knowledge applications in specific areas of passion even in arts, music, cooking, hostel or business management, IR management, they will be more effective with whatever they may be doing in later life. A collorary of this is the life-long learning people have been talking about for sometime now. To be excellent in vocation, trades or professions, the primary success factor is passion, dedication and determination.

So I have given my points and illustrations with example on how there could be more knowledge applications in the course of learning with projects identified to equip student to cast their thinking on how to be more competitive as knowledge workers in later life.

Such education approach or philosophy I am sure will not cost us anything but we will have a great deal of gains as students will become more passionate being involved in real work and applications. A lesson on computer is a good example of practical knowledge application at work where students are immediately exposed to practical works like designing and application of different parts of IT. How good if all students become passionate in something rather than being overly driven to pass examinations alone for examination sake.

Such practical knowledge application will provide an alternative to our narrow academically driven grade driven meritocracy approach in training up our talents. There will then be larger mass participation instead of confining the choice of our best to the few good in academic study. We will enlarge oru talent pools as a result.

So I believe it is right to emphasise on preparations to help students to start their own businesses and become bosses, a great deal of our problems can be solved.

May be people have short memory, Singapore was hit by mass retrenchments numbering by hundreds of thousands during the last two prolonged recession
with many academic graduates from uni finding problems in securing jobs. They will have no problem if they are practically trained in uni to excel in usable application packages beyond laws, social sciences, art and general degrees.

equlus84 SG

erm......Robert, I think ur idea of broad-based education is true and false to certain extent. Yes, true, entrepreneurship is veri important and creating some international brand names for our country is veriimportant. BUT, not everi one is keen or totally excited abt being a successful businessmen like u. Singapore as a country needs to have various ppls with different skill base to cater for different sectors of the economy. Both Polytechnic and University are two different education approach that caters for different audience, BUT at the same time being absolutely vital to Singapore...... Poly's approach like wat u say from all your previous posts, teaches wat the industries require or wat is expected and at the same time introduce some business skills for the student. While university concentrates more on academic and R & D stuffs......

Yes, true, u do not need a degree to do business or become a successful entrepreneur. But in the Science and engineering arena, it just boils down to upgrading of skills and knowledge based economy. I would like to point out that one of the previous poster laments on how his skills become obsolent after time and how he wished he studied more on thermodynamics. By moulding students to the requirements of the industry or just plainly teaching the hands on stuffs may look like a smart move........ as the students are able to get jobs immediately. But, in this process the students may face problems of being obsolete in a few years time, unless he upgrade himself. With the advent of globalisation and internet revolutions, new stuffs are coming up very quickly. Thus if ur education is just solely based on skills, a huge amount of the population will become obsolete. Thus many poly students go to the uni to study, is to upgrade themselves, not solely because they want to be more social-norm accepted. I'm currently a student from NTU, watever I typed above is based on my interaction with frens from poly that enter NTU. I'm not trying to defend the uni system or try to down play the poly system. But more of to show a more balanced picture.

In the past my teachers have been talking abt the challenge the rising China and India have on Singapore. In the past, I dun understand, but after first-handed experiencing in the campus itself, I starting to feel the heat. NTU is literally turning to a mini China or India. Many of these folks come from all over China or India under the government scholarship. Throngs after throngs. We also must not forget China and India by in their homeland, are both growing at an amazing rate. A China fren of mine from Fujian once told me that his area itself have at least 8 to 10 technological university and countless number of polytechnic. Shocked Shocked . This really serve as a wake call to me to strive harder and push myself harder so a to survive the competition. Cheap, abundant resources and manpower, China and India are slowly eroding all the manufacturing sector and also some low level R & D stuffs. Thus for Singapore to survive, we must go for those veri high end R & D things. Even in Singapore, we could see China and Indian nationals taking up jobs like engineering here. Bcos they are veri cheap, for every Singaporean, u can employ 4 to 5 of theirs. To make a matter worst, many of the China ppls need to serve a 6 yrs bond and may even be offere PR-ship if they choose to stay. Just to quote u how large the China wave is......... I'm currently studying material engineering, which is a course having onli 8yrs history and onli a small student population. But you could see quite a fair number of PRCians. Why? Bcos the EEE faculty is SATURATED with their own citizens, so they try their luck in this field instead. Dun worri, soon, MSE is going to be SATURATED too Evil or Very Mad Mad Mr. Green

vito_corleone SG

what has a bad economy got to do with education? what about the early 90s then before the dot com bubble burst when companies were practically begging graduates(who btw did not recieve a very "broad-based education given singapore's then system) to join them?? actual fact there is no such perfect education system if there were everyone would be super rich entrepreneurs by now..nature dictates there must be workers and there must be employers..if every one was capcable and rich this world would not exist. do you happen to have somewhat distorted neo-marxist ideals? Laughing

ShutterBug SG

Agreeable to all that you 've pointed out, but I think the education system (and everything else) here will change and improve, but as slow as trees grow!

robertteh SG

quote]Originally posted by equlus84:
erm......Robert, I think ur idea of broad-based education is true and false to certain extent. Yes, true, entrepreneurship is veri important and creating some international brand names for our country is veriimportant. BUT, not everi one is keen or totally excited abt being a successful businessmen like u. Singapore as a country needs to have various ppls with different skill base to cater for different sectors of the economy. Both Polytechnic and University are two different education approach that caters for different audience, BUT at the same time being absolutely vital to Singapore...... Poly's approach like wat u say from all your previous posts, teaches wat the industries require or wat is expected and at the same time introduce some business skills for the student. While university concentrates more on academic and R & D stuffs......[/quote]

Am I right to say that as citizen or student, we are concerned about jobs, economy, social and cultural cohesions and many other issues affecting our wellbeing. My view is that education impacts does impact the economy, our jobs and finally our wellbeing.

If our standpoint is self there is no issues that can affect us personally as we can always depend on our own personal abilities like creativity, entrepreneurship and determination etc to overcome whatever constraints that may be caused by government policies or actions.

In fact our society is being governed pragmatically to the exclusion of desirable values like cultivating a pro-people pro-business environment, empowering the people, mass participation in knowledge application or morality etc.

Am I right in saying that we desire to go to uni for all-round education to equip ourselves with knowledge, including new technologies as well and mould their character and abilities to think on our feet and solve problems objectively and be effective in our many quests.

If the above-stated desirable all-round uni-education objectives are acceptable then I suppose students should learn such values and be able to sustain such desirables in our lives.

So whether the uni in fact has in fact been able to turn out such desirable values in our students given the pragmatic nature of our society is another matter. We should not let the political environment distract us from pursuit of such values.

If we are to live meaningfully and carry on through life with contributions beyond ourself and not producing only bookish and academic people who are quick to show us their pieces of paper degree and expect people to give them higher jobs and higher pays etc., then there may be a lot of issues we need to discuss as citizens.

The hoi polloi or kopitiam people may not be too concerned with such values now. Many have been bought over by interim HDB upgrading benefits or other election goodies to care or comment on the wrongfully pragmatic governance philosophy currently adopted.

Citizens cannot ignore such values and sooner or later they may have to come back to such values to correct the wrongs implanted over the past years.

Some people would say "I will do what I like and study what I like as I want to be free and feel free to do as I like."

Good luck to such lasseiz faire and anarchism in this world. There is nothing wrong with such thinking which are in-born attributes which one has to correct and make amend of over time as one progresses in life.

As long as one has the passion and determination and treasure learning and entrepreneurship one will be doing well for the time being.

I do not mean that polys are the only place we could educate people to apply knowledge and be better knowledge workers better able to sustain our economic competitiveness through life.

Uni students have all the opportunities to upgrade and expand their traditional theoretical and conceptual or examination-targetted approach to allow our system to grow organically to expand to knowledge application. This constraints from the past are man-made and can be changed.

Holistic education and knowledge application are intertwined and cannot be separated. I hope I did not give the impression that only in Polys is our education pro-application. I have given Polys education to illustrate as examples of my point about practical broad-based education attuned to our future needs. In the past students go to uni to obtain general academic degree and upon graduation then decide to get certain jobs that best befit their educational training.

Today, new industries require knowledge-application ready workers not the earlier general academic types produced in larger numbers in earlier years. Poly education serves to deemphasise on theoretical and conceptual general teaching of worldly knowledge but concentrate in specific application of distinct trades and technologies.

Whether in Polys or uni, my view is that all students should strive to upgrade from theoretic examination-driven system to application packages to equip themselve with passion to apply what they learn and not be driven in more and more academic general paper chase for their own sake.

Yes, true, u do not need a degree to do business or become a successful entrepreneur. But in the Science and engineering arena, it just boils down to upgrading of skills and knowledge based economy. I would like to point out that one of the previous poster laments on how his skills become obsolent after time and how he wished he studied more on thermodynamics. By moulding students to the requirements of the industry or just plainly teaching the hands on stuffs may look like a smart move........ as the students are able to get jobs immediately. But, in this process the students may face problems of being obsolete in a few years time, unless he upgrade himsel..I'm currently a student from NTU, watever I typed above is based on my interaction with frens from poly that enter NTU.

I do not think that poly education being tied to knowledge application does not equip students with theories or concepts useful to larger issues of management. It is not true that whatever they learn will become obsolete in a few years. Poly students who are knowledge applicators do get fair opportunities to supplement their application learning with management, economics and philosophy. Their differences from uni is the emphasis laid in the area of knowledge application.

The medical sciences taught in the uni have gone increasingly high-tech. So in every field not just the poly learning, knowledge is being displaced by newer thinking and new technologies not just in computer software, or chip designing. Constant relearning is a necessity to uni students too depending on what he is pursuing.

In the past my teachers have been talking abt the challenge the rising China and India have on Singapore. In the past, I dun understand, but after first-handed experiencing in the campus itself, I starting to feel the heat. NTU is literally turning to a mini China or India. Many of these folks come from all over China or India under the government scholarship. Throngs after throngs. We also must not forget China and India by in their homeland, are both growing at an amazing rate. A China fren of mine from Fujian once told me that his area itself have at least 8 to 10 technological university and countless number of polytechnic. . This really serve as a wake call to me to strive harder and push myself harder so a to survive the competition. ....... I'm currently studying material engineering, which is a course having onli 8yrs history and onli a small student population. But you could see quite a fair number of PRCians...

We are now in an age of fast changes due to the rise of nano-technology where existing methods of production are fast becoming obsolete being replaced by soft-ware operated smaller tools, equipments and processes.

Such nano-technology leads to the rise of software programming which is one area demanding our attention. This is an important factor which has resulted in Japan losing its competitive edge to US in electronics in the advent of nano technological advances led by Micro-soft/IBM/Intel etc.

Do we still want to produce many students to do laws, general science, economics and sociology etc. Yes in order to run the economy we need all these different specialists but we now find shortage of software and chip designers to operate newer nano equipment or there is a need to rethink and reset our education priority and change it to be more knowledge-application based and we can benefit from such re-think.

Poly and technological univerisities may exist to teach students to learn hands-on skills but they might not produce good students because of their lack of understanding of overall perspective to apply knowledge to create passion and creative and innovative culture needed in larger challenges.

So if China and India are to succeed in their upgrade, they will have to attune knowledge applications as the key approach in running these various technology universities. If we cannot do so in our uni or poly in knowledge application approach, there will be no reason for them to send their students here to learn from us one day...It may happens over a few years as new thinking in the third-wave economy is happening too at great speed.

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