Published Date: 10 February 2022 11:00 AM
News Speeches
Mr Warren Fernandez, Editor-in-Chief, SPH Media Trust
Prof Lily Kong, President, SMU
Ladies and gentlemen
1. Good morning everyone.
2. Over the past two years, the resourcefulness and resilience of our students, educators, schools, and institutes of higher learning (IHLs), have allowed the education system to progress, largely uninterrupted.
3. Three major forces shape our long-term vision for education:
4. Today, I will just focus on our universities – as one part of our wider education system – as platforms to achieve the three ‘C’s:
5. Our education system, especially our universities, must evolve – not just to respond and react; but to anticipate, adapt and advance.
6. Let me start with the first ‘C’ – continual learning.
7. If the half-life of skills and knowledge has shrunk, then it must follow that the pace of acquiring skills and new knowledge must intensify.
8. In addition, the time taken for us to prepare a course, train the trainers and graduate the students – typically taking a few years – can also mean that the material may be obsolete by the time our students graduate from the course!
9. How should we then respond, anticipate, and adapt?
10. First, we need to jettison the concept that we can ever be done with learning.
11. Second, there is no pre-defined pathway to success. Success is never static.
12. Third, success can only be achieved regularly with the relevant skills and knowledge modules, being combined and recombined, to create new value propositions for the evolving market.
13. Fourth, we need to significantly speed up our learning loops to shorten the time-to-market for skills and knowledge – from frontier research, leading industrial technologies, and breakthrough market practices, to academia and back to the market. This defines our competitiveness as a people and system.
14. Our educational institutions, including our universities, are not simply transmitters of knowledge and skills. If transmission of knowledge was our only objective, then many online learning platforms can already do that.
15. Instead, we must leverage technology to transmit baseline foundational knowledge and skills through self-paced and adaptive learning, and by using accumulated and real-time data to focus our teaching efforts. This will free up time, energy, and bandwidth to develop in our students the higher order skills to connect, collaborate and create.
16. The second ‘C’ is about being connectors to collaborate and create value.
17. To this end, we must deepen our connections in three dimensions:
18. As the world threatens to fragment along geopolitical, ideological, cultural, and technological lines, Singapore – our institutions and people – can distinguish ourselves as a platform for people to connect, collaborate and create to transcend those lines.
19. The second dimension of connection that we need to tighten is the connection between academia and industry. This applies to our students and faculty.
20. For industry, instead of worrying that our students may graduate with the outdated or obsolete skills, why not reimagine industry going into academia, working with academia to ensure that the students are ready for the future?
21. The third dimension of connection to up our game is with our community.
22. Finally, to better connect with the world, the industry and our community, the universities must do more to collaborate with each other and better build on one another’s strengths.
23. Let me now turn to the final ‘C’ – confidence.
24. Confidence in ourselves as individuals starts from understanding our strengths, weaknesses, and interests. This is as important as literacy and numeracy in our foundational years.
25. On the international stage, Singaporeans are often admired for our values and competencies.
26. The second aspect is confidence in ourselves as a people. In a world of contesting ideas, ideology, and values, we must have the confidence to chart our own destiny based on a pragmatic and disciplined search for what works best for our people in context, rather than be prisoners of ideology; and define our way of life based on our own set of values.
27. The final source of confidence comes from understanding one’s contribution to society.
28. Universities, having taken in the cream of the academically inclined crop, must certainly be expected to deliver students who can succeed in life.
29. To all our students looking forward to the commencement of your university education, I will conclude today’s speech by sharing three reflections from my university journey.
30. Reflection #1 – University is neither the pinnacle nor end of learning. If we were to attend one, University is but one part of our lifelong pursuit of learning, wisdom, and contributions. What matters more than the grades that we obtain in university, is the foundation we will establish to learn for life, and to learn throughout life.
31. Reflection #2 – Learning is no longer simply the acquisition of knowledge and skills. Teaching is no longer just the transmission of knowledge and skills. Foundational learning will increasingly be self-paced, and adaptive. Time spent in class and with fellow learners and educators will increasingly be for connection, collaboration, and creation of new solutions for tomorrow’s challenges, rather than just solving known challenges with known solutions.
32. Reflection #3 – For Singapore to defy the odds of history, we will need the confidence to chart our own destiny and develop solutions for our unique challenges in context. Our universities and graduates have the responsibility to define success beyond oneself.
33. Thank you.
Last Updated: 10 Feb 2022