I just watched the National Day Rally Speech given by Prime
Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
One of the topics of his speech was on the need for
Singapore to continually progress. People must be educated and trained to meet
the needs of a highly-skilled economy. He gave an example of how smart devices
will be able to fulfill the functions of a personal secretary, and the personal
secretary will have to move up the skills ladder to become an office manager. The
government has in mind to increase the number of university graduates from the 27%
to 40%. This is to be done by the incremental expansion of the intake of the
existing universities and the creation of two new universities in Singapore: SIM
University (UniSIM) and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT).
I wonder whether the expansion of the provision of
university education will enable Singapore to furnish the manpower for a
highly-skilled economy. For one, I think that there is such a thing as a gradation
of human capacities in a population. Not everyone will be capable enough to
take on jobs that are highly-skilled. There is only so much that the provision
of higher-tier education service can do in training up a workforce for roles in
a highly-skilled economy. I think that it would be very difficult to increase
the number of skilled workers beyond a certain percentage of the population
because nature may not provide enough capable people.
However, even though I feel that it would be tough to obtain
a high concentration of skilled workers, I think there is no other choice for
Singapore. It’s really an economic issue. There needs to be a certain threshold
number of highly skilled workers for it to be effective to contribute to
progress in society. This revolves around the concept of economies of scales.
There must be a certain quantity of highly-skilled workers that are effectively
integrated to work towards the desired outcome of societal progress. A country
with a large population can do this much more easily even with a
low-concentration skilled force because the population can provide the
necessary numbers that achieves the threshold requirement for economies of
scales to take place. This is not possible for Singapore which has a small population.
This may place some difficulties on the economy to have to maintain a certain number
of skilled jobs which is not equitably proportionate to the number of the
population. I think that it might lead to a sub-standard highly-skilled economy.
For example, there may be many scientists and engineers around, but who are not
of the requisite quality to meet the aims of a highly-skilled economy.
I wish that I can be
proved wrong though because I like the egalitarian ideal of human beings being
capable enough for any roles in society as long as they have the requisite
training. I might be wrong in my sentiment on this. If this is so, then the
expansion of university education can easily meet the objectives. Otherwise,
Singapore may have to rethink about how it wants its economy to develop.
Amidst all the talks about the direction to which Singapore
must strive towards, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong did not forget about
stressing the importance for Singaporean to be caring and amicable towards one
another. “Not just a prosperous country – but one that has a heart.” It’s nice
to hear the Singapore Prime Minister address this. There is a need to address
the social aspects of a country’s development. I don’t think a highly-educated
and wealth nation is correspondent with a socially gracious nation. A nation with people that is courteous and
kind in treating one another goes a long way towards a happier nation.
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