Universities must continue to provide industry-required skills and deepen collaboration with companies, or risk disruption, said Education Minister Lawrence Wong yesterday.
He cited the example of technology company Dyson in the United Kingdom, which set up its own Dyson Institute of Engineering and Technology in 2017 to train a ready supply of engineers to tackle a shortage of such professionals in the British economy.
Mr Wong said: "They (Dyson) set up Dyson Institute because of their difficulties in getting engineering graduates in the UK, so they had their own institute to meet this engineering skills gap.
"At the start, Dyson Institute offered degrees in partnership with the University of Warwick. Now it's been granted its own degree-awarding powers, so it doesn't need a university any more, it's become a university in its own right."
While Mr Wong felt that such drastic measures are not currently necessary in Singapore, he urged universities here to continue to strengthen and deepen their collaboration with companies.
"Our polytechnics do very well in this regard, and the universities increasingly will also have to take a lead from the polytechnic sector in getting industry inputs to shape curriculum," he added.
Singapore Management University (SMU) president Lily Kong highlighted her university's efforts to engage with industry partners and develop industry-related skills. Pointing to SMU's collaborations with technology giant Google and local healthcare group SingHealth, she said: "Work-study arrangements are now very much a part of what we do. We have programmes that are co-developed with Google Singapore, for example, in data analytics, and co-delivered by Google practitioners and we've internships with Google partners."
"We have a work-study arrangement with SingHealth in health economics and management co-created with the senior leaders in SingHealth so that even though we're not producing doctors and nurses as some of the other universities do, we produce those who can run hospitals."
Mr Wong, who also co-chairs the multi-ministry task force tackling the Covid-19 pandemic, exhorted universities to continue to push the frontiers of knowledge and discovery, and be part of the broader ecosystem for innovation and entrepreneurship and enterprise within the country.
"In our fight against Covid-19, for example, we have also seen how such university-academic-industry collaboration has been most useful, for example, in developing test kits and other solutions to fight the virus," he added.
