Speeches
Speech by Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Minister for Finance and Minister for Education, at the Memorandum of Agreement Signing Ceremony for Nanyang Polytechnic and the University of Stirling to Jointly Offer A Degree in Retail Marketing Under the Poly-FSI Collaboration Framework on Friday, 18 January 2008, 1500 Hours at Nanyang Polytechnic
His Excellency Paul Madden, British High Commissioner
Mr Chan Lee Mun, Principal & CEO, Nanyang Polytechnic
Professor Christine Hallett, Principal & Vice Chancellor, University of Stirling
Ladies and Gentlemen
Good afternoon.
It gives me great pleasure to be here this afternoon to witness this agreement between Nanyang Polytechnic and the University of Stirling to jointly offer a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Retail Marketing.
This collaboration between NYP and Stirling, both with strong reputations of their own, adds another high quality upgrading opportunity for our poly students, and one that is attuned to the demands of the market.
Keeping the Polytechnics Relevant to the Market
Over the years, we have been careful to align our educational pathways and opportunities to the needs of the economy, so as to ensure that our tertiary graduates are employed. This effort to ensure relevance to the market has served Singaporeans well, and allowed us to avoid the problems of widespread graduate unemployment or underemployment that are being seen in many developed countries, and even in rapidly growing countries like China and India. We will continue with this approach.
In this regard, our polytechnics play a key role, by providing an industry-relevant tertiary education through an applied and practice-oriented approach to learning. Our polytechnic graduates are in high demand in the job market, with more than 90 percent securing employment within six months of completing their diploma programmes. The polytechnics also keep themselves close to industry, and play increasingly important roles in catalysing innovation in local industry.
Expanding Role of the Polytechnics
The polytechnics are also a key part of the broader re-shaping of our education system, to inject greater diversity and allow for more choice. In short, we are creating more opportunities for individuals to find a pathway that will help them discover their talents and achieve their aspirations. Not everyone takes the same pathway, but everyone has a crack at succeeding at what they do, moving up and achieving their aspirations.
I am particularly happy with the developments within the polytechnic sector itself, and also the polytechnics’ recent linkages beyond the sector. Let me briefly talk about 5 areas in which the polytechnic sector has been recently enhanced: (a) a richer educational experience through more broad-based learning and overseas exposure; (b) linkages with industry as partners in innovation; (c) more opportunities for continuing education and training; (d) collaboration with schools to develop an applied pathway for learning that begins at the secondary level; and (e) new upgrading pathways for polytechnic graduates to pursue a degree education.
A Richer Polytechnic Education Experience
Courses in our polytechnics are becoming more multi-disciplinary and broad-based. New courses are constantly being developed and introduced, as timely answers to nascent industries in the Services and Creative sectors, such as Interactive & Digital Media, Healthcare, Tourism and Hospitality. In 2007 alone, a total of 27 new courses were offered in the five polytechnics.
The polytechnics are also providing more opportunities for students to gain exposure and to learn abroad, through overseas industrial attachments, immersion programmes and community involvement projects. They go all over - Asia, Australia, the US and Europe. They come back from their overseas experience enriched, typically a little charged up, more mature and more engaged in their environment outside of school work.
In exchange, our polytechnics are also taking Singapore’s strong brand of technical education to the region and the world. Republic Polytechnic organised the first International Problem-Based Learning Symposium in March 2007 which attracted over 500 delegates from around the world. NYP has had long experience in providing overseas consultancy, participating in Singapore’s technical assistance (TA) initiatives in human resource development for developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Through such consultancy projects and conferences, our polytechnics have extended Singapore’s reputation as an education and knowledge hub beyond our shores.
Linkages with Industry - Polytechnics as Partners in Innovation
Today, our polytechnics are not just purveyors of knowledge, but also platforms for innovation. Polytechnics are increasingly becoming a product development platforms of choice for their industry partners. Nanyang Polytechnic has established several collaborations with industry, like the Cell Broadband Engine Technology Innovation Centre set up in partnership with IBM. The polytechnics have also established 3 Centres of Innovation (COIs) - namely Singapore Polytechnic’s Food Innovation Resource Centre, and Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s Marine & Offshore Technology Centre and Environment & Water Technology Centre. The Centres serve as important nodes to help local small and medium enterprises in technology application and development that they can quickly adopt and commercialise. Our polytechnics will continue to introduce more such Centres in the coming years.
Through collaboration and joint projects with industry, polytechnic staff are themselves kept up-to-date with the latest developments in industry. It filters through to their students, who are better prepared to take on the challenges of the workplace when they graduate.
Continuing Education and Training
In addition to Pre-Employment Training, our polytechnics are playing a greater role in Continuing Education and Training (CET). Last year, the Government introduced subsidies for Singaporeans taking Advanced Diploma and Specialist Diploma programmes. We are now looking into how our polytechnics and ITE can play a greater role in the delivery of Competency-based CET, again building on the technical capabilities that our institutions have established over the years. Specific initiatives on this effort will be announced later this year.
Collaboration with Schools to Introduce an Applied Learning Pathway
The mode of learning in polytechnics is unique in its focus on application to real-life problems. We had this in mind when MOE encouraged our schools to work closely with our polytechnics to develop a new, applied study options at the secondary level. As of Sep 2007, over 1,400 secondary school students have offered or are offering Advanced Elective Modules. (AEMs are elective courses in applied areas such as digital media, food innovation, and entrepreneurship. These are typically 40-hour courses delivered by polytechnic instructors to give our students the chance to experience practice-oriented learning.) Surveys done by the polytechnics show that these students are finding these courses rewarding, and helped broadened the view of their options in higher education. Ngee Ann, Singapore and Temasek Polytechnics have now gone further to develop new Applied Subjects to be offered at the GCE “O” level from 2008 onwards.
New Upgrading Pathway
Our polytechnics will be an enduring feature in the Singapore education landscape, imparting solid, practical skills which employers demand.
While we keep the university and polytechnic systems distinct, there is scope for a closer articulation and linkages between the two in many areas. Our polytechnics will be an increasingly viable upgrading pathway for students with aspirations to pursue a university education and obtain degrees. The local universities are now taking in more polytechnic students. This will expand further when the fourth university comes into being.
But we will also retain and grow the opportunities for polytechnic students to obtain degrees in various applied specialisations through link-ups between the polytechnics and reputable foreign specialised institutions (FSIs). These link-ups will provide diversity and free-play in the publicly-funded university sector as we expand places to cater to 30% of each Singaporean cohort. We need to expand this free-play over time, so as to respond quickly to new economic and market opportunities, and to offer choices and paths that meet the increasingly diverse interests of our students.
We already have two such collaborations between the polys and foreign institutions - Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s collaboration with Wheelock College and the NTUC Regional Training and Resource Centre to offer a degree programme in Early Childhood Education, and its other collaboration with Newcastle University and Singapore Polytechnic to offer a degree programme in Naval Architecture. Today, we witness the launch of the third Poly-FSI collaboration between Nanyang Polytechnic and the University of Stirling to offer an Honours degree in Retail Marketing.
We will continue to grow these link-ups. By 2010, we expect to have at least 10 such collaborations between our polys and foreign specialised institutions.
Together, the expansion of places in the local university sector and the collaborations with foreign institutions will mean more university places for worthy polytechnic students.
Collaboration between Nanyang Polytechnic and University of Stirling
I would like to congratulate Nanyang Polytechnic for finding an excellent partner institution in the University of Stirling. The university has a well-established retail management programme and is a recognised leader in retail management education and industry-based research. I am told that its Institute of Retail Studies is one of Europe’s largest and leading university-based specialised retail institutes, and has over 20 years of association and experience with Singapore’s and Asian Pacific’s retail industry. Given the current scarcity of qualified retail executives and managers, it is indeed an opportune time to launch this new degree in Retail Marketing.
The degree programme in retail marketing will be the first of its kind in Singapore. I am also happy to note that this new degree programme is available not only to Nanyang Polytechnic graduates, but also to all holders of relevant diplomas from the other polytechnics. I would like to encourage the lecturers in Nanyang Polytechnic to work closely with the University of Stirling’s professors on applied research projects that are relevant and useful to the retail industry in Singapore and the region.
Conclusion
The polytechnic sector has gone from strength to strength, and has entered an exciting new phase. I encourage the polytechnics to continue their climb, look for new peaks, and keep adding to the solid reputation that they have developed in Singapore and internationally. In closing, I would like to congratulate once again both Nanyang Polytechnic and the University of Stirling in this partnership. I look forward to a very successful collaboration.