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HUMAN CAPITAL
Our human resource is limited. We have to maximise our local
potential and top it up from the outside. This is the fifth
thrust of our new growth strategy.
EDUCATION
At last year's Rally, I pledged to increase spending on education
by $1.5 billion a year (from 3.6% of GDP to 4.5%).
In particular, the Government will improve post-secondary
education opportunities for our children.
First, ITE will regroup its current 10 campuses into three
regional campuses over the next 15 years.
The larger campuses will allow a full range of courses to
be offered, and provide opportunities for cross-disciplinary
learning. Students can also look forward to better sports
and recreational facilities.
The first new fully integrated campus will be ready by 2005.
Secondly, we have decided to build a fifth polytechnic. It
will open its doors in 2003.
Thirdly, we will build three new Junior Colleges in the next
three years. This will bring the total number of Junior Colleges
to 19.
Fourthly, we will expand the university sector. Today, one
in five Primary One students eventually goes on to a local
university. We aim to improve this to one in four by 2010.
This means raising the current annual university intake by
4,000 students.
But NUS and NTU are already as big as they should be. The
Singapore Management University, or SMU, will increase its
student intake till it reaches its target enrolment. Further
expansion of NUS, NTU and SMU is not desirable. A committee
headed by Peter Chen has offered preliminary ideas for a fourth
university. I do not want to prejudge its recommendations,
but in principle, I support a fourth university if its graduates
can meet the standards demanded by the economy.
LIFELONG LEARNING
The Government will do more to enhance the skills of ordinary
workers.
We have doubled the Lifelong Learning Fund from $500 million
to $1 billion since April.
This year, the Government will give added emphasis to programmes
to help older and lower-educated workers.
Executives, managers, engineers and other professionals
may have to be retrained too, so that they can move into new
growth areas. We shall study how this can be done.
GLOBAL TALENT
We can spend more on education and training. But the reality
is that no matter how much we spend, with a population of
just over three million, we will not have enough local talent
to compete in the top league of nations.
Did you watch Team Singapore play Manchester United? If you
did, you would have a good idea of the big gap between our
standards and international standards. Team Singapore played
well but it was no match for Man U because Man U was really
an international and not a British team. Mah Bow Tan told
me that about half the Man U team were non-British. He added
that Man U was only playing at half pace. Otherwise, the score
line might well have been 16-1!
A recent article by the newspaper, "The Australian",
commented how corporate Singapore was controlled tightly by
a small group of people. The same few Singaporeans are on
the boards of many companies and Government Statutory Boards.
The journalist did not know the real reason. The truth is,
we do not have enough corporate talent to draw on. Hence,
so many demanding jobs fall on the shoulders of the same few
people.
We have good local talent, but we need to top it up with
global talent.
Others Are Recruiting Talent Too
We are not the only ones to have concluded that global talent
is essential.
Australia recently enlarged its immigration programme to
bring in about 45,000 skilled migrants a year. And Japan is
finalising a blueprint to import at least 30,000 IT professionals
in the next five years.
The US economy has done immensely well because it enjoys
a "brain gain" year after year.
For example, one quarter of the companies in Silicon Valley
are created by or led by Indian and Chinese immigrants. Also,
since 1945, the US has won 60% (228) of all the Nobel Prizes
in economics and the sciences. At least 30% of these economists
and scientists were born outside the US.
Attracting Multi-National Talent
That is why we have to bring in multi-national talent, like
the way we brought in MNCs.
Like MNCs, multi-national talent, or MNTs, will bring in
new expertise, fresh ideas and global connections and perspectives.
I believe that they will produce lasting benefits for Singapore.
The competition for MNTs is intense. Just as we use incentives
to attract MNCs, we may need to consider special measures
to attract MNTs.
Retaining Singapore Talent
But the war for talent is not just about attracting foreigners.
Retaining our own talent is going to prove a big challenge.
Bright Singaporeans are being harvested by others even before
they graduate.
Yeo Cheow Tong told me that JP Morgan, a leading Wall Street
investment bank, recruited his daughter before she even started
her final year in a top US university. Upon joining the bank
after graduation, she was assigned to a corporate finance
team that executes billion-dollar projects. Apart from the
pay, such a first job excited and challenged her.
I asked Cheow Tong whether his daughter would come back to
Singapore. He could only say, "I hope so." I hope
so too.
I hope the daughter of Mr Abdul Rashid Gani, Managing Partner
in the law firm of Khattar Wong & Partners, will come
back too. She was one of the top students in Cornell University.
During her final year, three top financial institutions in
New York wooed her. They flew her to New York, put her up
in first class hotels and took her out to fine restaurants.
She is now working for Credit Suisse First Boston in New York.
Green harvesting of bright students is a common practice
in America. It shows how hard top companies try to recruit
top talent. We may lose many Singaporeans this way.
Other small countries face similar problems retaining talent.
New Zealand is a good example. Many New Zealanders work overseas,
in Australia, Britain or the US. So many New Zealanders have
emigrated that newspapers write about "the flight of
the kiwis", even though kiwis cannot fly.
Recently, an eminent professor from the London School of
Economics, Professor Robert Wade, spoke at a conference in
Auckland. He said:
"Once a threshold density of skilled people is lost,
the rate of out-migration is likely to accelerate, companies
and organisations will have increasing trouble meeting staffing
needs, the quality of public services will decline, the tax
base will erode, and so on."
Professor Wade also spoke of how overseas Taiwanese and Koreans
are offered considerable incentives and subsidies by their
governments to return home. Even China is now doing this.
How much more critical must it be for Singapore to attract
talent from around the world, and to retain our own talent?
In the next few months, as our economy slows down and unemployment
increases, some Singaporeans may again question the need for
more global talent. I urge you to understand that this is
a matter of life and death for us in the long term. Our own
talent is being creamed off. If we do not top up our talent
pool from the outside, in ten years' time, many of the high-valued
jobs we do now will migrate to China and elsewhere, for lack
of sufficient talent here. So it is better for us to anchor
talent and jobs in Singapore, and make our imported talent
feel welcome as part of the Singapore team.
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