Jamus is concerned.
4d ·
Singapore has a skilled worker gap. Reports indicate that as many as 4 in 5 companies face workforce talent shortages. The solution by the government has been to import such human capital from abroad. This, in and of itself, isn’t a big deal. If those skills cannot be met by the local workforce, then allowing companies to hire foreign talent helps keep them economically viable. To the extent that this then creates new jobs that locals take on, it becomes a win-win. The problem, then, is when these jobs that are filled by foreigners can actually be performed by our own graduates, or if we’re not doing a good enough job (no pun intended) of preparing our students for what employers want.
One reason for the latter is not so much that we don’t have a good enough educational system—we still routinely rank among the best globally, even if one may quibble about methodology—it is that we seem to be in an educational arms race. Most of us are familiar with how our performance is frequently determined relative to our peers, when we are “graded on a curve.” This is appreciated when one faces a very difficult course, when everyone is struggling to cope. But the opposite happens when it is an easier subject: if scaling were to be applied, then those who actually know their stuff—and who would otherwise score an “A”—get unfairly penalized, with a marked-down grade.
This is problematic if we believe that the purpose of education is to transfer knowledge, rather than to sort between the wheat and the chaff. After all, we don’t say to someone who can drive properly that they also need to drive better than others, too. If so, then we need to adopt a different mindset about who should get into our institutes of higher education. In particular, entry criteria should care less about relative entrance criteria, but absolute ones. In other words: make the cut based on whether you have what it takes to pass the required courses and obtain the diploma or degree, and you should get into the program.
As long as the criteria are set realistically, this won’t dilute quality at all. In exchange, we ensure that all students that possess what it takes to be able to graduate aren’t denied the opportunity to study what they wish. Some may argue that this could saddle weaker students with an unbearable debt burden, should they end up dropping out. One way to minimize this risk is to ensure that resources are expanded to ensure that nobody is left behind. And truth be told, I’ve never been convinced that performance in one high-stakes test, like the “O”/“N”/“A”-levels, is indicative of future success. Indeed, many successful people (including CEOs, politicians, and academics) have shared how they did poorly in a given exam.
Others claim that this would result in the overproduction of graduates. But in reality, what we have is a shortfall in skills training. We then try to fill these with foreign graduates, who may not have been good enough to success in our present system to begin with. I would much prefer us to take our local students, and channel them toward the courses where there are industry needs. This is especially the case with applied degrees, like those from SIT, SUSS, and SUTD. Our top students can still be channeled into our flagship research universities, like NUS and NTU, via relative standing, to ensure that these schools attract and retain the best minds worldwide.
Such an approach is tried and tested. The French public Université system is generally open to all who have passed the baccalauréat, their high school diploma equivalent, while top students tend to try for the private Grande Écoles instead. In Germany, certain universities go as far as to practice free admission (just meet basic university entrance criteria), with standards for tougher courses maintained by having students who cannot handle the material to voluntarily drop out. And while the prestigious University of California system maintains tough standards, the next-tier California State University system has much more liberal entry policies, with underrepresented college students even assured entry into certain courses.
Education Minister Chan, in his response, objected to the idea. He explained that the goal isn’t to increase the number of graduates, per se, but to ensure that we match graduates to the actual needs of employers. I can’t agree more, but the fact is that making tertiary education entry dependent on meeting minimum entry criteria isn’t mutually exclusive with making sure matches are optimized.
In fact, my point is that we are neglecting the huge pool of potential students at home, who are interested in and able to pursue programs of study that is needed by industry, but who are overlooked because they are shut out of programs due to their high-performing peers. We then crow about how we need better matching and more imported talent, when the human capital is already there, waiting to be trained and deployed. That is real failure that I see, and one that can be addressed by minimum-entry-criteria universities.
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Sunday, 16 March
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