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SINGAPORE : The Government is looking into setting up a fourth university in Singapore.
During his National Day Rally speech on Sunday, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong also said the objective is to allow 30 percent of each cohort to get into publicly-funded universities by 2015, compared to 23 percent today.
This is one way to level up society, and provide citizens with a top rate education.
More students are progressing to universities as they do better academically in schools.
15 percent of polytechnic students, for example, now go on to the local universities and many more go overseas.
In fact, estimates are that half of polytechnic students eventually gets a degree.
And Prime Minister Lee said Singapore should expand university places but must ensure that students get a good education and valuable skills.
He added that some countries have produced large numbers of graduates without regard for quality or employment opportunities.
As a result, many graduates find it difficult to get jobs or are under-employed.
To ensure Singapore avoids this problem, the government will pay attention to the quality of education.
This means that existing universities will not expand capacity and thus overload faculty members.
Instead, one or more new institutions may be set up with distinctly different strengths compared to the current three universities.
To oversee this, a committee chaired by Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew has been set up, with Dr Tony Tan as its advisor.
The committee will decide within a year on the best way to proceed.
At a secondary level, the Prime Minister said all neighbourhood schools have developed their own special area of excellence, thanks to passionate teachers, and more resources for schools.
And he thanked the teachers for their work.
But while Mr Lee was convinced of high standards across all schools, he raised concerns about Malay language skills.
Mr Lee said: "Many older Singaporeans can understand and speak Malay and Bahasa Indonesia. Including many older non-Malays. But in the younger generation, too few. We need more people to be familiar with the language, maybe not totally fluent but chit chat. Then we can interact with our neighbours in their language, work together on opportunities, and deal with whatever issues that arise from time to time."
To encourage more non-Malays to learn Malay in addition to their mother tongue, incentives such as two bonus points for junior college admissions will be introduced to get students to take up the Malay Special Programme.
A Regional Studies Programme will also be introduced, where students will do Malay as a third language, and learn about our Southeast Asian neighbours.
100 scholarships will be offered for this programme a year.
Three or four schools will offer the Regional Studies Programme and there will also be immersion visits and exchanges for those in the programme.
One school is also likely to offer Bahasa Indonesia as a third language. - CNA/ch
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