The Policy and Politics of the Cohort Participation Rate in Universities: The Case of Singapore and “SkillsFuture”

Abstract

In the media and policy discourses in Singapore, comparisons have often been made with countries like Taiwan and South Korea to validate the Singapore government's long time policy approach of maintaining the cohort participation rate (cpr) in public universities at around 25% to 30%. Considering the rates of youth unemployment in Taiwan (12.7%) and South Korea (9.5%), where the cpr in universities has hovered around 80% to 90%, it would appear that the problem is one of an over-supply of graduates. While Singapore has maintained a commitment to skills training and to fostering a well-resourced polytechnic sector and the technical and vocational education sector, the government announced in 2012 its plans to raise the country's cpr in universities to 40% by the year 2020. It established new public-autonomous universities to fulfill this goal, and expanded study places in existing universities, nevertheless with the proviso that internships would central to the curriculum, and that the degrees on offer would be well-tuned to the job shortages in the economy.

What policy and political factors explain this change in Singapore's long-held approach to the cpr for universities, especially when compared to the cases of Taiwan and South Korea? This paper offers an explanation of the policy and politics that underpinned the issue of the number of university places in Singapore, and also an explanation of the Singapore government's shift in policy in 2012—albeit a policy move that took place within the context and language of the government's new SkillsFuture programme, in which the education institutions are expected to continue to be well plugged into the needs of industries.

Introduction

In the media and policy discourses in Singapore, comparisons have often been made with countries like Taiwan and South Korea to validate the Singapore government's long time policy approach of maintaining the cohort participation rate (cpr) ¹ in public universities at around 25% to 30%. ² Considering the rates of youth unemployment in Taiwan (12.7%) and South Korea (9.5%), ³ where the cpr in universities in both countries has hovered around 80% to 90%, ⁴ it would appear that the problem is one of an over-supply of graduates. This correlation could also suggest that a skills- or qualification mismatch with the job market is an explanation for graduate unemployment, understood as a subset of youth unemployment. In other words, the number of university graduates produced by universities each year is more than what the job market can absorb, and the national economy probably needs a larger sector of vocational education institutions.

1

Alternatively known as the gross enrolment rate (cpr) in the literature, albeit with a slight difference in definition—the cpr takes the Primary One (grade 1, elementary school) as the base rate, while the cpr takes as its base rate the entire population for that cohort (including those who did not enroll in Primary One). For the purposes of the countries under discussion here, the cpr and the cpr can be taken to be interchangeable, since primary education is almost universal in these country cases.

2

See for instance: Amelia Teng, “Singapore's Youth Unemployment Rate One of the World's Lowest: Tan Chuan-Jin,” Straits Times, May 28, 2013, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapores-youth-unemployment-rate-one-of-the-worlds-lowest-tan-chuan-jin; Ng Jing Yng, “As Graduate Numbers Grow, a Hard Truth: Not All Degrees Are Equal,” Channel NewsAsia, May 23, 2015, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/as-graduate-numbers-grow/1866808.html.

3

Chang May Cho, “Dream Jobs Prove Elusive for South Korea's College Grads,” Straits Times, March 11, 2016, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.asianews.network/content/dream-jobs-prove-elusive-south-koreas-college-grads-11291.

4

“Gross Enrolment Ratio, Tertiary, Both Sexes (%),” The World Bank (based on statistics from UNESCO Institute for Statistics), accessed October 30, 2016, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.TER.ENRR; Chuing Prudence Chou, “Who Benefits from Taiwan's Mass Higher Education?,” in Mass Higher Education Development in East Asia: Strategy, Quality, and Challenges, ed. Shin Jung Cheol, Gerard Postiglione, Huang, Futao (Singapore: Springer, 2015), 231-232, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/∼iaezcpc/publications/C_publications/Journals/chap_14_Who_benefits_05012015.pdf.

Nevertheless, while Singapore has maintained a commitment to skills training and to fostering a well-resourced polytechnic sector and the technical and vocational education sector, the government announced in 2012 its plans to raise Singapore's cpr in universities to 40% by the year 2020. It established new public-autonomous universities to fulfill this goal, and expanded university places in existing ones, with the proviso that internships would be central to the curriculum, and that the degrees on offer would be well-tuned to the job shortages in the economy. What made the Singapore government shift its position, albeit an incremental one?

This paper offers an explanation of the policy and politics that underpinned the issue of the number of university places in Singapore, and then an explanation of the Singapore government's shift in policy in 2012. It begins with a discussion of two seminal policy moments in the history of Singapore education policy, marked by the 1978 Goh Report on the Ministry of Education and the 1986 Report of the Economic Committee, which played an integral role in establishing the ability of the developmental state in Singapore to generate and implement plans in the education sector, for the purpose of securing economic growth. It then follows through the period where the Singapore government consolidated its consistent policy of keeping university and polytechnic education separate, bucking the trends seen in other countries such as in the United Kingdom in 1992, when the ‘binary divide’ was abolished. However in Singapore, status and pay differentials saw many diploma holders from polytechnics seeking ‘upgrading’ to a degree, often studied for at private schools. Combined with unhappiness about a lack of opportunities for Singaporeans over a policy of admitting capable foreign students in universities, these factors eventually led the government to increase its long-held cpr in universities—albeit within the context and language of the government's new SkillsFuture programme, in which the education institutions are expected to continue to be well plugged into the needs of industries.

In making such observations, it would be important to make a qualification regarding the differences in the higher education landscapes in Singapore, in comparison to other advanced economies like Taiwan and South Korea. Singapore's cpr in universities is low, but the rest of the cohort would go to polytechnics and Institutes of Technical Education (ite)—institutions regarded as some of the best in the world, inspired by the much admired German and Swiss models of technical education—for their post-secondary education. If they desire to obtain a degree, these polytechnic and ite graduates would still have the chance to attend private colleges, including degree programmes offered jointly with foreign universities. There are also branch campuses of foreign universities such as James Cook University. These students would, however, be less likely to obtain a government tuition fee grant, unlike in the more prestigious public universities. As a result, Singapore's Ministry of Education has reported its cpr in tertiary education at 89.5% as of 2015, ⁵ a category which it takes to include enrolment in polytechnics and ites.

5

“Combined and Gross Enrolment Ratio for Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Education Coverage,” Ministry of Education, Singapore, last modified September 15, 2016, https://data.gov.sg/dataset/combined-and-gross-enrolment-ratio-for-primary-secondary-tertiary-education.

There are only six institutions in Singapore which currently hold university status, all of which operate on a form of public-autonomous model, although two of them started life as private universities (Singapore Management University and SIM University). In Taiwan and South Korea for instance, the number of both private and public universities in each country number between 100 to 200, so there is correspondingly less of a market for private colleges as in Singapore.

A Brief Historical Perspective on Higher Education Policymaking in Singapore

To control something like a country's cpr in universities requires the sort of ‘pristine policy lab’ condition ⁶ that Singapore's political and policy -making apparatus has. Traditionally, Singapore has been conceived of as a technocratic, ‘administrative state' ⁷ that, for a variety of socio-historical reasons, had been depoliticised in the arena of competitive party politics and student political activism. The same cannot be said of South Korea or Taiwan at the present time.

6

Jeanette Tan, “Contain Singapore's Rich, Institutionalise Dissent: Donald Low,” Yahoo News, January 29, 2013, accessed October 30, 2016, http://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/ips/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2013/03/Yahoo_Contain-Singapores-rich-institutionalise-dissent_290113.pdf.

7

Chan Heng Chee, “Politics in an Administrative State: Where Has the Politics Gone?,” in Understanding Singapore Society, ed. Ong Jin Hui, et al. (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1997 [republication of original 1974 edition]), 294-306.

There are at least two instances which come to mind as examples of the government reining in the universities in the early years of Singapore's independence. From 1968 to 1975, the Vice-Chancellor of the University was Toh Chin Chye, who concurrently occupied a cabinet position as Minister for Science and Technology, and was a key founding member of the ruling People's Action Party (pap). Toh was said to have kept the lid on student activism on campus during his tenure, such that it did not manifest itself in more vociferous forms as witnessed in other countries. ⁸ Then there was the decision of Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in 1980 to shut down Nanyang University, a private university established by the local Chinese community, on the basis that the university's heritage of instruction in the Chinese language purportedly rendered its graduates less employable than their English-schooled counterparts from the University of Singapore. The move was met with strong opposition from the university's alumni, the local Chinese community, as well as some of Lee's own cabinet colleagues. The move spelled the end not only of a ‘Chinese university’ in Singapore—although Nanyang University had already been in the process of converting its courses to be taught in English throughout the 1970s—but also the end of a private university established through the contributions of the local community.

8

Kevin Tan and Lam Peng Er, Lee's Lieutenants: Singapore's Old Guard (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1999).

However, instances such as the two above-mentioned ones still did not usher in the era of coherent policymaking for universities and higher education in Singapore, to the extent of the two seminal policy moments to be discussed in the ensuing subsections.

The 1978 Goh Report on the Ministry of Education

In 1978, the Singapore government was of the view that a thorough review was needed to align the education system with the rapidly changing social and economic needs of the country, and so, then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Keng Swee was tasked to lead a study team to identify problems in Singapore's education system and propose solutions for reform. The resultant 1978 Goh Report ⁹ was a landmark document for education policy in Singapore, known more widely for its recommendations for streaming of students at K-12 level, based on academic abilities and language proficiency in the student's mother tongue, which would become a controversial issue. Nevertheless, the report also had major ramifications for higher education in Singapore, besides the impact it had for the government's education policymaking approach more generally.

9

Goh Keng Swee and the Education Study Team, Report on the Ministry of Education, 1978 (Singapore: Singapore National Printers, 1979).

Principally, the Goh Report was critical of the way the Ministry of Education (moe) was organised, noting that ‘the Ministry had no overall plan for the whole education system and no definition of specific objectives…the basic objective of developing literacy was not explicitly recognised…middle level management was not guided by consistent and tangible overall goals’. ¹⁰ What the report recommended was a major restructuring of the moe and its roles that would fit in with a more holistic policymaking approach to K-12 to university education in Singapore. In a parliamentary speech on 26 March 1985, Tony Tan Keng Yam, then Minister for Education, made an explicit link between higher education and what the 1978 Goh report sought to achieve:

10

Ibid., chapter 5.

The reason why we have not been able to produce as many university graduates as other countries and as we would like is because of the fact that we do not have, in past years, students of the required quality and ability and training to benefit from the university education. And the reason, Sir, why we do not have enough of these students is because of the fact that there were severe flaws in our education system […] This is what Dr Goh [Keng Swee] has been striving over the last six years to remedy. (emphasis added).¹¹

11

Singapore, Parliamentary Report, March 26, 1985, Vol. 45, col. 1454.

The 1986 Report of the Economic Committee

Up until the early 1980s, Singapore enjoyed high rates of economic growth, giving its policymakers the validation that Singapore's export-oriented industrialisation model was the right one. However, a brewing slowdown in international trade and in the United States’ rate of growth had a negative impacted on Singapore's export-driven economy, leading to a recession in the Singapore economy in 1985, its first since independence. This raised questions about the efficacy of Singapore's strategies for skill development among its workforce.

The Goh Report, referred to above, was issued at a time when the Singapore government had already begun planning the restructuring of the economy. But as late as the year 1984, 70% of new entrants into the Singapore workforce only had secondary educational qualifications and below, while only 9% had tertiary qualifications. Table 4.1 puts these figures alongside that in other countries in Asia and with the US, for comparison.

Table 4.1

Country comparison of educational profile of workforce, in percentage

	Singapore (figure in brackets: new entrants) 1979	1984	Taiwan 1984	Japan 1982	US 1983
Tertiary *	3 (4)	5 (9)	6	19	19
Post-Secondary	9 (14)	11 (21)	23	46	16
Secondary	28 (40)	31 (44)	26	35	50
Primary and below	60 (43)	53 (26)	45		15
Total	100	100	100	100	100

source: economic committee, ministry of trade and industry, singapore (1986).

*

“Tertiary” is taken here to mean only university-educated employees, in contrast to the Singapore government's more recent use of the term “tertiary” to include university, polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education (ite) enrolment, as in the 2015 data from the Ministry of Education referred to earlier in this paper.

The following year, 1986, a government-appointed committee of economic experts published a crucial report, The Singapore Economy: New Directions,¹² which recommended a comprehensive suite of policy changes for the revival and stimulation of economic growth. The language and tenor of the report emphasised the need to educate each individual to their maximum potential, as well as to develop an innovative society, whose members would be equipped with flexible skills at every level of the economy. This in effect framed the forward policy for Singapore's universities in an economic framework. The report made important recommendations that would determine the forward thrust of education policy into the 1990s:

1. Upgrading the median education level of the Singapore workforce;

2. Providing continuous training and retraining for the workforce;

3. Expanding and improving education at the post-secondary and tertiary levels, and increasing their intakes, in particular; and

4. Providing broad-based education aimed at the development of the ‘whole person.'¹³

12

Economic Committee, The Singapore Economy: New Directions (Singapore: Ministry of Trade and Industry, Singapore, 1986).

13

Ibid.

The report, in effect, framed the forward policy for Singapore's universities within an economic framework.

Singapore's ‘Capped’ Cohort Participation Rate (cpr)

Genesis of a Policy

Since the 1980s, the Singapore government had been warning that an over-supply of university places would lead to graduate unemployment and the debilitating social effects that would carry. That was at the point of time that Singapore was making a transition from an industrial economy to a more knowledge-based one. Particularly illustrative was the reply given during a parliamentary debate in 1988 by Tony Tan Keng Yam, then Minister for Education, in response to a call by an opposition Member of Parliament (MP, hereafter MP) for Singapore to have four or five universities, on the basis that the ratio in developed countries was generally to have one university per 500,000 persons in its population:

If we do this [allow anyone and every student to enter university], are we doing a service to these students? What will happen to them when they graduate and find that they cannot get enough jobs? Is it better to be an unemployed graduate or to be an unemployed non-University student? I think it makes no difference. When you are unemployed, you are unemployed. I do not think it is a service to allow thousands of students to go through university, spend time, spend money, make an effort and then find, when they graduate, that there is nothing for them to do. I think, Sir, that this is also one reason why students in many of the newly-developing countries have to emigrate and go abroad to find jobs because they find no room to exercise their talents in the countries where they are educated.

Therefore, Sir, every responsible country must plan its university graduates in accordance with its manpower requirements. This is not to deny any student the chance to go to university but to ensure that we will not have a situation as has happened in many other countries, where there are thousands of unemployed graduates. You have graduates working as hawkers, waiters, waitresses—jobs which manifestly do not require any university education but which, because these graduates cannot find jobs, they are forced to take on this type of employment. I do not think it makes any sense. And just because they have gone through university, I do not think they will thank us for it. We must make sure that when we admit a child to university, we must be reasonably sure (we cannot guarantee, but we must be reasonably sure) that there will be a demand for his or her services after he or she graduates.¹⁴

In another parliamentary debate on 20 March 1989,¹⁵ both backbench MPs of the governing party and an opposition MP called for the government to start a third university. MP Dixie Tan said that Singapore's universities were catering for only 4% of the student cohort and that the figure was too low for a nation ‘aspiring to high technology and high literacy.’ MPs Chiam See Tong and Leong Horn Kee drew attention to the insufficient university places in Singapore by comparing their numbers with those in Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. These MPs also gave the figure of around 11,000 to 12,500 Singaporeans studying at overseas universities as signs of an increasing demand for higher education. Education Minister Tony Tan Keng Yam's reply was that the government was focused on upgrading the then Nanyang Institute of Technology into a full university, and that ‘we have to do this step by step in order to make sure that all the universities which we establish will be proper ones, universities which we would be proud of.'¹⁶

This feature of the Singapore higher education system is not unique, of course. Its conceptualisation bears some resemblance to the California Master Plan for Higher Education of 1960,¹⁷ a higher education architecture where the specific mission, purpose and redundancies for the research university, the state university and the community college was discouraged. This was also a pyramid-shaped architecture, in which just a few research universities would occupy the apex of the system; according to the plan, the top one-eighth (12.5%) of the high school graduating class would attend a campus of the University of California, the next portion of the top one-third (33.3%) would attend the California State University system, while the remaining two-thirds of the cohort could attend the California Community Colleges.¹⁸

14

Singapore, Parliamentary Report, February 25, 1988, Vol. 50, cols 537-538.

15

Loong Swee Yin, et al., “Third University Will Have to Wait: Dr Tan,” Straits Times, March 21, 1989, accessed October 30, 2016, http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Article/straitstimes19890321-1.2.28.1.17.aspx.

16

Ibid.

17

“Master Plan for Higher Education in California,” University of California, Office of the President, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/mastplan/.

18

“Major Features of the California Master Plan for Higher Education,” University of California, Office of the President, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.ucop.edu/acadinit/mastplan/mpsummary.htm.

The author of a key 1994 World Bank report referred to this same architectural concept as institutional diversification, in the context of the massification of higher education.¹⁹ It sought to define the ‘increased differentiation’ in higher education as the ‘development of non-university institutions and the growth of private institutions,’ generally intended to ‘help meet the growing social demand for higher education and make higher education systems more responsive to changing labour market needs.'²⁰

The report highlighted the seminal role of non-university higher education institutions in offering ‘training opportunities that respond flexibly to labour market demand rather than supply-side factors.'²¹ It even made reference to Singapore where, it said, that ‘employment prospects for graduates of polytechnics are so good that many talented students seek entry into the vocationally oriented polytechnics rather than the regular academic programme offered by the universities.'²² Furthermore, and in citing examples such as the British government's 1992 move of converting 35 polytechnics in England into universities, the World Bank report spoke of the ‘risk of “academic drift”'— of ‘numerous instances of non-university institutions being diverted from their original academic mission and being upgraded gradually to full-fledged universities, thus defeating the purpose of providing alternative educational opportunities.'²³

Raising the cpr in Universities (2012)

While Singapore has maintained a commitment to skills training and to fostering a well-resourced polytechnic sector and the technical and vocational education sector, the government announced in 2012 its plans to raise the cpr in universities to 40% by the year 2020.

It should be noted, of course, that the cpr in universities had indeed been gradually increasing, from less than 10% in the 1980s, to 26% by the year 2012. Indeed, it appears that the Ministry of Education had been setting periodic targets for increasing the cpr in universities, such as an earlier target of 30% by the year 2015; but these were always incremental targets largely in tandem with Singapore's population growth. The target of 40% recommended by the Committee on University Education Pathways Beyond 2015 (cuep) report, to be achieved by the year 2020, represented the biggest leap hitherto. The government expanded university places in existing ones, and two new ‘public-autonomous’ universities were established by acts of Parliament—Singapore University of Technology and Design (sutd) and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). The government also stepped in to expand the number of places at SIM University (UniSIM), a private college which subsequently grew into a university with significant state support.

19

World Bank, Higher Education: The Lessons of Experience (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 1994), 28-39, accessed October 30, 2016, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/278200-1099079877269/547664-1099079956815/HigherEd_lessons_En.pdf.

20

Ibid., 28.

21

Ibid., 31.

22

Ibid., 32.

23

Ibid., 33.

At his National Day Rally speech in August 2011, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong highlighted the need to expand the university sector. The Ministry of Education (moe) then formed the Committee on University Education Pathways Beyond 2015 (cuep) to study the university landscape and recommend ways to expand the publicly-funded university cpr beyond the previous target of 30% set for 2015.²⁴ Some observers read it as a reaction to the results of the 2011 general election in Singapore, at which the long-ruling People's Action Party (pap) took a drubbing at the polls (though still a rather impressive performance by international comparisons). For observers, concerns in the area of education opportunities and job prospects were factors explaining the less-than-stellar pap results, though the mood of the electorate that year was coloured by a wide range of issues beyond education.

When one considers the phenomenon of graduate unemployment and under-employment in South Korea and Taiwan, which have been linked to the ‘over-massified’ university systems in those countries, this would appear to have been a blessing in disguise. Yet the vast majority of these diploma holders in Singapore graduating from polytechnics still felt the need to ‘upgrade'— to use the popular local colloquialism—to degrees. This phenomenon is usually explained by the ‘Confucian’ socio-cultural contexts of these East Asian countries that place a premium on educational qualifications.

However, a more likely explanation is that the asymmetrical competition in the globalised marketplace of jobs—as Singapore is—that Singaporean polytechnic diploma holders had been facing. A common if anecdotal grievance among Singaporean polytechnic diploma holders is that they have to compete for jobs with non-Singaporeans, especially as they progress along in the careers—non-Singaporeans who do not necessarily hold the kinds of bachelor degrees from the National University of Singapore (nus) or Nanyang Technological University (ntu), for a long time the only choices for Singaporean students.

24

Committee on University Education Pathways Beyond 2015 (cuep), Report of the CUEP: Greater Diversity, More Opportunities: Final Report (Singapore: Ministry of Education, Singapore, 2012), accessed October 30, 2016, https://www.moe.gov.sg/media/press/files/2012/08/cuep-report-greater-diversity-more-opportunities.pdf.

Rather, some of these degree holders from other countries hail from universities that were themselves converted from polytechnics. Examples that come to mind are the 35 universities in England that were converted from polytechnics, as a result of the British government's 1992 exercise of ending the ‘binary divide’ between universities and polytechnics. It therefore seemed grossly unfair for Singaporean diploma holders who were competing for jobs.

If unable to secure one of the limited places at the public universities after their polytechnic education, these diploma holders would fork out large sums towards the tuition fees at private degree institutions which, while not being degree mills, vary considerably in instructional quality. Some have been outright dubious as commercial entities, let alone a purveyor of the hallowed university experience. Some of these institutions have been shut down abruptly, to much media sensation, and to the great detriment of their students’ academic progression.²⁵

SkillsFuture

All these policy changes in the higher education scene in Singapore took place within the framework and language of ‘SkillsFuture,'²⁶ a major new cross-ministry programme for lifelong learning and skills training for the Singapore economy. In other words, the expansion of university places would be made with the proviso that internships would central to the curriculum, and that the degrees on offer would be well-tuned to the job shortages in the economy.

This has involved the Ministry of Manpower, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, as well as their affiliated government agencies such as Workforce Singapore, which have described SkillsFuture as a ‘national movement.’ The impetus for the SkillsFuture programme was initially separate from the concurrent developments in higher education policy. SkillsFuture, first announced in the Finance Minister's 2015 Budget, stemmed from the Singapore government's programme of economic transformation, as a response to the slow growth in productivity in the economy.

25

Amelia Teng, “More Private Schools Make Grade,” Straits Times, December 5, 2015, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/more-private-schools-make-grade.

26

“About SkillsFuture,” SkillsFuture, Government of Singapore, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.skillsfuture.sg/what-is-skillsfuture.html.

The connection was then made with the Applied Study in Polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education Review Committee's (ASPIRE) report of 2014,²⁷ which sought to strengthen vocational and skills training, while some observers lamented the report's apparent reduction in emphasis on the need for a university degree. In this, policymakers were apparently driven by concerns over the increasing number of unemployed university graduates. Before 2012, the unemployment rate of university graduates was the lowest, but had since overtaken that of groups of other educational qualification levels. In 2013, that rate was 2.8% for university graduates, compared to 2.7% for diploma and professional qualification holders, and 2.4% for the below-secondary education group.²⁸

At the core of SkillsFuture is a programme between government, employers, employees and training providers for instilling ‘skills mastery’ among Singaporeans from their schooling years to retirement, involving tools such as monetary credits and fostering employer recognition of such training programmes. For instance, the most widely-known scheme within the SkillsFuture framework, as announced in the government's 2015 Budget, is that every Singaporean citizen aged 25 and above will receive S$500 (US$360) worth of SkillsFuture credit that can be used towards courses recognised by the government.²⁹

Where SkillsFuture relate to higher education primarily is in the idea of “stacking” of credentials—course credits from apprenticeship programmes to more formalised study programmes—towards certificates, or a polytechnic diploma, or even a university degree, as first introduced by Ong Ye Kung, the holder of the newly-created cabinet position of Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills), in October 2015.³⁰ The guiding principle has been to avoid a ‘paper chase,’ otherwise known in international discourses as the ‘diploma disease,'³¹ that excessive reliance on formal educational institutions and the credentials they provide in the selection process in labour markets. As Ong himself put it:

27

Ministry of Education, Singapore, Applied Study in Polytechnics and Institute of Technical Education Review (ASPIRE) Report: August 2014, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.parliament.gov.sg/lib/sites/default/files/paperpresented/pdf/2014/Misc.%203%20of%202014_0.pdf; Amelia Tan, “New SkillsFuture Council to ensure workers are equipped with right skills,” Straits Times, September 17, 2014, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/new-skillsfuture-council-to-ensure-workers-are-equipped-with-right-skills.

28

Randolph Tan, “Growing Concerns Over Graduate Employment,” Straits Times, September 5, 2014, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/growing-concerns-over-graduate-employment.

29

Chong Zi Liang, “Singapore Budget 2015: Every Singaporean Above 25 to Get $500 For a Start Under SkillsFuture,” Straits Times, February 23, 2015, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singapore-budget-2015-every-singaporean-above-25-to-get-500-for-a-start-under-skillsfuture.

There is nothing wrong with paper qualifications, because how else will industries and employers know your level of knowledge and proficiency? What we do want to prevent is paper chase for its own sake and an overemphasis on one particular type of paper qualification.

We are already seeing more diversity in higher education credentials. Beyond traditional academic qualifications, there is a burgeoning market for alternative qualifications globally—graduate certifications, even ‘badges,’ transcripts and portfolios are becoming credentials in their own right.

If we succeed in our effort, we will have a better balance between knowledge and skills pursuits, between academic and competency accomplishments, and across a wide spectrum of disciplines that is more reflective of the needs of the economy and personal aspirations.³²

In this vein, and explicitly as part of the national SkillsFuture programme, the National University of Singapore (nus) launched in June 2016 a School for Continuing and Lifelong Education (SCALE), at which mature students can take short-term certificate programmes that can be ‘stacked up’ towards degrees.³³ Other universities in Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Management University, the Singapore University of Technology and Design, and Singapore Institute of Technology also plan to set up their own centres similarly dedicated to lifelong learning.

30

“Speech by Mr Ong Ye Kung, Acting Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills), at the Opening of the oecd-Singapore Conference on Higher Education Futures, 14 October 2015,” Permanent Mission of the Republic of Singapore, Geneva, accessed October 30, 2016, https://www.mfa.gov.sg/content/mfa/overseasmission/geneva/press_statements_speeches/2015/201510/press_20151014.html; Ong Ye Kung, “Tensions and Opportunities in higher education,” Straits Times, October 15, 2015, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/tensions-and-opportunities-in-higher-education.

31

Ronald Dore, “The Diploma Disease Revisited,” Institute of Development Studies, Bulletin 11.2 (1980), accessed October 30, 2016, https://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/Dore11.2final.pdf.

32

Ong Ye Kung, “Tensions and Opportunities in Higher Education,” Straits Times, October 15, 2015.

33

Calvin Yang, “NUS Launches Centre to Promote Lifelong Learning,” Straits Times, June 18, 2016, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/nus-launches-centre-to-promote-lifelong-learning.

Separately, the earlier cuep report of 2012 recommended developing the pre-existing Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) into a university, to roll out a pathway for polytechnic diplomas to obtain applied degrees in subject areas such as engineering, allied health, early childhood education, culinary arts and digital animation, with close links to the industry.

It is still early days to assess the impact of SkillsFuture. In reaction to the SkillsFuture framework, some observers have warned of a potential situation where universities become too ‘vocationalised,’ at the expense of developing a flexibility of thinking among students which is otherwise necessary for an unpredictable labour market; nevertheless the concurrent growth of new pathways to a degree in Asia and Singapore such as with liberal arts education have been welcomed.³⁴ With regard to specific provisions of the SkillsFuture programme, some have questioned the sufficiency of S$500 worth of credits in pursuing a sustained learning programme, and possible hurdles such as the lack of support from employers for employees to pursue further learning, as respondents to a 2016 survey conducted by the Institute of Singapore Chartered Accountants (isca) borne out.³⁵

Concluding Analysis

Underlying these policy issues lies the fundamental question on the purpose of universities and of degrees, in a globalised world run on market-oriented principles. Are they merely constructs of prestige in a larger game of mere credentialisation? How do these developments shape the university curriculum and course offerings?

34

Philip Altbach, as quoted in: Yuen Sin, “Broad-based Learning ‘More Relevant Now’,” Straits Times, August 15, 2016, accessed October 30, 2016, http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/education/broad-based-learning-more-relevant-now.

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“This Is What Singaporeans Really Think of the SkillsFuture Initiative,” Singapore Business Review, January 19, 2016, accessed October 30, 2016, https://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/singaporeans-really-think-skillsfuture-initiative-232500184.html; Institute of Singapore Chartered accountants (isca), isca Pre-Budget Survey 2016 (Singapore: isca), accessed October 30, 2016, http://isca.org.sg/media/777829/isca-pre-budget-survey-2016-report.pdf.

The Singapore government has rightly sought to prevent the classic diploma disease (or, in the local colloquialism, the ‘paper chase’). It has, in the meantime, also sought to diversify the higher education landscape, such as with the establishment of the Yale-nus College, the country's first liberal arts college. One thing for certain, though, is that the social demand for a university education—however defined—is an inherently political issue, even in the ‘pristine policy lab,’ ‘administrative state’ that is Singapore.

Nevertheless, the kind of state intervention to control the cpr in universities is only possible in Singapore and not in the other countries such as Taiwan or South Korea, where there is a whole strata of private, comprehensive universities that operate with far more autonomy than their counterparts in Singapore. Policymakers in Taiwan or South Korea therefore have less policy tools and leverage to calibrate the cpr in universities at a national level. In the first place, of course, it had been much easier to establish private universities in Taiwan and South Korea than in Singapore, where the government had long resisted pressures since the 1980s to establish more universities, let alone private comprehensive universities. This is testimony to the extent of state control over the higher education sector that is needed for effective leverage over a policy issue such as to matching universities to the needs of the labour market. In other words, the cpr policy in Singapore is simply not feasible nor replicable in other countries.