Higher education in Singapore and elsewhere

I was struck by two of the recommendations made by the Economic Strategies Committee's Subcommittee on Fostering Inclusive Growth.

One, it wants to slow down the growth of the foreign worker population in Singapore to "maintain the current balance between the foreign and local workforce in the long run".

Two — and this is what this post is about — more than one in three working Singaporean is expected to be a degree holder by 2020. The subcommittee says in its report:

About half of our resident workforce is projected to have at least a diploma qualification by 2020, up from 39% in 2009, including about 35% with degrees, up from 27% in 2009.

Is that asking for the moon?

Nope, just coming up to speed.

In America, 29% of adults 25 and older had a bachelor's degree in 2008, according to a US Census Bureau press release.

Graduates made up almost half the adult population in some of the cities.

The US Census Bureau reported in 2004 that 48.8% of Seattle's 25-and-over population had at least a bachelor's degree, as did 48% in Raleigh, North Carolina, 47.8% in San Francisco,42.5% in Washington, DC, 41% in Atlanta, 40.6% in Austin, Texas, 40.5% each in Minneapolis and Charlotte, North Carolina, 38.1% in Boston, 36.8% in Portland, Oregon, and 36.5% in Albuquerque, New Mexico. ( More details here)

Unesco report

Higher education is reaching new highs, according to Unesco's Global Education Digest 2009 (available as a PDF here). It says that, in many European and North American countries, "at least one-third of people of tertiary graduation age obtained an ISCED 5A qualification in 2007… graduation ratios exceed 40% in Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Russian Federation and Sweden…"

ISCED stands for International Standard Classification of Education. The Unesco report explains:

• ISCED 5A programmes are largely theoretically-based, research-preparatory (history, philosophy, mathematics, etc.) or intended to provide sufficient qualifications for professions with high skill requirements (e.g. medicine, dentistry, architecture). They require at least three years of full-time study "although typically they are of four or more years".
• ISCED 5B programmes are generally shorter and designed to help students acquire "practical skills" for certain "occupations or trades". They require at least two years of full-time study "but, in practice, often run up to three years".
• ISCED 6 programmes lead to the award of an advanced research qualification, such as a PhD degree.

Tertiary education in Asia-Pacific

More than one out of three people in East Asia and the Pacific complete an ISCED 5A programme, says the report. "Australia leads the region with a ratio of 60.7%, followed by New Zealand (53.5%), Japan (40.1%) and the Republic of Korea (39.4%). About one out of five tertiary-age students graduate in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China and the Philippines. In China, which began to turn out the largest absolute number of tertiary graduates in 2003, the ratio is 11.7%. In contrast, the ratios are below 3% in Cambodia and Lao PDR."

The report does not mention Singapore in this context.

But it says Singapore, Greece, Venezuela, Ethiopia and the British Virgin Islands spend more than one-third of their education budget on tertiary education — more than most other countries.

GDP and tertiary education spending

Government spending on tertiary education amounted to nearly 1% of Singapore's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2007, according to the Unesco report.

Several countries spend more.

Governments spend 1% or more of the GDP on tertiary education in more than half the countries in Europe and North America, says the report.

There's also substantial private investment in tertiary education in countries like America and South Korea.

Total public and private expenditure on tertiary education amounted to 3% of the GDP in America, more than 2.5% in South Korea, well over 1.5% in Australia and 1.5% in Japan in 2007.

Now here's a question.

Singapore expects 35% of the resident workforce to be degree holders by 2020, up from 27% currently.

Will the great majority of them graduate from the local universities?

There are three now, one more is coming up.

Can so many graduate from so few?

Of course, there are Singaporeans who study abroad.

Studying abroad

According to the Unesco report, 11.3% of Singapore students — more than 18,000 in all — were studying abroad in 2007. More than 9,000 were in Australia, over 3,500 in America, more than 3,000 in the United Kingdom, and a few hundred each in Canada and Malaysia.

Twenty per cent of Hong Kong students were studying abroad at the time.

Share/Bookmark

Related posts:

1. Singapore education under Tharman
2. Singapore to lead in next big thing in education: Harvard prof
3. Dollar likely to rise higher: Wall Street Journal