Jeremy Chen
National University of Singapore.
While government foresight is a good thing to have, the key to the long term economic viability of Singapore is not government prescience in the selection of the next big thing. Rather, the quality of education our young receive will be either a strong impetus for progress or a weak and futile push that, as many have learnt in their first exposure to science, does no work.
A series of knowledgeable and well-educated cohorts will be able to identify opportunities and innovate to grasp those opportunities. I would like to focus on science and engineering graduates as these are the necessary “skilled inputs” required for a healthy high-value-added economy.
The Current State of Affairs
It is disappointing that the quality of output from our universities is not exactly up to scratch. Most are not capable of independent application of what they have learnt (or should have learnt) in school. Few are willing to learn new skills or fine tune those they have; Even fewer have the breadth and depth of knowledge to make their learning process efficient.
Many will disagree with me. It is to be expected when an unpleasant viewpoint is put forth. Sadly, many employers and supervisors will probably agree with me. Worse still, it is likely that a number of local university professors hold similar points of view. I did my undergraduate studies at NUS and one of my professors told me, some time ago, that “the quality of Singapore engineering has fallen”. (I will not name him as linking his name to such a remark may do him a big disservice.)
From my previous interactions with university professors and people who assess potential hires for technical ability, most do not expect much from fresh graduates and seem pleasantly surprised when a one exhibits knowledge and demonstrates capability. (I know I was when a recent hire in my department could coherently explain his undergraduate project work, and did so at a suitable level of abstraction.)
Blame!
I wouldn’t blame university faculty. While the incentives there promote research above teaching, by and large, they do not perform horridly at teaching. On the other hand, responsibility for learning should be, rightly, placed on the student who sets out to earn a degree with the intent of “getting something out of it”.
The older generation of graduates pride themselves for their independence and ability to take care of themselves. To them this “something” meant, first and foremost, knowledge, and also the certification of having gone through the process of acquiring that knowledge. For the current generation the focus seems to be on the latter aspect (along with, for most, a potential marriage partner). This unfortunate structural feature of the labor pipeline can be traced to structural features of the Singapore economy.
The incentives present in our economy disproportionately rewards financial middlemen, who have constructed a system where they oversee financial flows and take a fraction of the financial flux as a cut. As such, many who choose to read science and engineering look to a career in financial intermediation where they, euphemistically speaking, “connect financial supply to demand”. Intermediaries are useful to have — money itself, which makes trade convenient, is an intermediary. However, with the arguably incorrect reward system, the rush into finance is impoverishing the world due to the fall in creation of real economic value.
With that in the backdrop, many science and engineering students primarily seek only to obtain a paper qualification that indicates some quantitative training and at the same time gives them, as a safety net, license to apply for a technology job. What this causes is a lack of interest in coursework and eventual lack of knowledge retained after graduation. As a result of this, many engineering graduates lack the confidence or ability to do engineering. Most of those who do take up technology-related jobs take on sales roles or roles that previously would have been done by non-graduate technicians. It might be said that the real supply of engineers in the labor market has fallen.
In the financial industry, many science and engineering graduates take on sales jobs and work on basic quantitative analysis. Most do not even know how to properly price a financial derivative and end up selling products that they themselves do not understand. (Insurance policies are in essence financial derivatives too.)
In fact, I have even met “scholars”, including those who studied overseas at great public expense, who cannot satisfactorily describe what they did in their final year projects not 5 years ago. Can one reasonably forget work that one recently spent a year or half a year on? If “scholars” who are, as a population, more effective learners starting to see university as a four-year paid vacation, this hints at a larger problem in new and upcoming members of the workforce.
A Corrective Measure
This is a sorry state of affairs and does not bode well for Singapore’s long term economic viability. Without going into what I see as consequences of this, I would like to propose a measure to ameliorate this. I believe that local universities should raise the bar substantially and only allow students who have demonstrated a good level of proficiency to pass courses (and hence, graduate). Universities should not be afraid of failing students who are not yet competent in their coursework.
Why do this? I believe that in science and engineering, most of the value is created by those who have at least some threshold level of knowledge and capability. I do not refer to “the talented tenth” or any notion that hints at a top X%, what I mean is that some approximate level of knowledge and capability that generates network effects of knowledge, making the individuals within which such a dynamic exists proficient value generators.
While rising waters lifts all boats, it does not leave all intact. Competency levels will be raised, but some will not be able to graduate. That is fine. In my opinion, those people would not have made good scientists or engineers anyway and would definitely have trouble on their own in the job market.
What may not be easy to predict is whether even more would like to pursue quantitative finance (as opposed to sales roles) as a career given the raised capability levels. I do not think I will be able to make a good forecast on the answer to this.
In the short term, the value of a science/engineering degree will be raised, and new graduates will be able to find good jobs more easily with employers having greater confidence in the technical competency of job applicants. Graduates will also have been equipped with a good level of knowledge and facility with that knowledge to confidently do their work effectively and pursue new knowledge when the need arises.
On the flip side, this will cause a dip in the number of science and engineering graduates with those who are unwilling or unable to handle the rigor. However, I would argue that the number of engineering graduates should be raised not by lowering standards, but rather through the force of increasing personal aspiration on the part of successive cohorts of students. We should not play with our nation’s long term economic viability to raise a KPI in the short term.
Implementation
Operationally, a greater focus on teaching in universities will be required, meaning more staff will be needed and changes in remuneration policy will be required. In assessing efficacy of learning, I am for the demonstration of skills, meaning rigorously assess project work. The rationale behind this is obvious and should be agreeable to most (especially those who, like me, hate exams). However, if rigorously assessed projects are not practical from the standpoint of manpower, a shift to high stakes examinations has to take place.
While the benefits of high stakes examinations is debatable at the primary and secondary levels are debatable, sound reasons exist for institutionalizing them at the tertiary level. To argue by example, building a bridge is a high stakes project, and the skills that go towards building that bridge should be rigorously ensured. If these skills are not demonstrated through (rigorously assessed) project work, challenging examinations will have to serve as a proxy.
Notably, with high stakes examinations, professors will be hit more often with the “annoyance” of students griping about grades. I would argue that greater transparency in marking would be a solution. By allowing students access to their marked papers and the marking guide, fewer frivolous requests for review will take place. (Marked papers could be scanned and the images made available to students.) Furthermore, releasing marked transcripts and revealing marking guides might turn out to be a useful post examination review with high pedagogical value.
Conclusion
I believe that raising standards at local universities will be necessary for long term economic viability. This will involve potentially expensive operational changes, but the net effects will be well worth our while. What I am certain about is, we cannot persist in our current path or future Singapore will be largely populated by port workers servicing ships on brief refueling stopovers.
And that is why I’m studying stateside. I have met too many Singaporean executives who express abject disgust for Singaporean graduates and told me to get out if I could.
Being a recent graduate myself, I agree with the writer’s assessment of the situation. I have too many friends from science and engineering rushing into the financial institutes that in my perception, generates no real value. Besides the raising of examination levels, I believe more could be done in the teaching and training process, Paper examinations only assess one’s theoretical ability. Some people learn and understand more by practicing on actual systems. Although one can argue that the Honors Project serves this purpose, I feel that it is not enough. An Honors Project only focuses on a single aspect of the big picture. More could be done to involve students to projects not just from the Universities but also from the industry, so as to further improve the industry.