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government decided to put more emphasis on high value-added industrial and ser-
vice sectors after the economic recession in the mid-1980s (The Economic
Committee 1986 ). This reveals the fact that how higher education should be devel-
oped in Singapore is largely subject to the state’s policies to serve the interests of
both national and economic developments.
Since the mid-1990s, the government has constantly demonstrated its strong
determination to develop the publicly funded higher education institutions, espe-
cially universities into ones whose academic standards, research quality and mana-
gerial efficiency can be up to the level attained by world-class universities. This aim
coincides with the government’s goal and commitment to develop Singapore into a
global education hub in Asia which is capable to pull in foreign students and aca-
demics and also make them to stay in Singapore. Nevertheless, the expansion of
higher education institutions should be carried out without sacrificing the quality of
education and compromising the academic standards of university students.
Therefore, the expansion of higher education has to be carried out by the state in a
more cautious manner in order to avoid the negative impacts of unlimited expansion
of higher education like oversupply of university places and non-employability of
university graduates to occur as in other universal higher education systems in cer-
tain developed and newly developed countries (Gopinathan and Lee 2011 ).
Challenges from Globalization on Higher Education
in Singapore
While the state factor is crucial, it is also noticeable that coping with challenges
arising from globalization is always deemed as the strongest reason for reforming
and restructuring the existing higher education system. Globalization refers to
global practices of quality assurance and audit systems and also stronger emphasis
on international rankings, both of which induce pressure on higher education insti-
tutions for greater accountability for their own performance and resource allocation
(Gopinathan and Morriss 1997 ). This was reflected in the policy of “corporatizing”
the existing state universities as publicly funded autonomous universities in 2005
with greater flexibility and autonomy in managing financial and human resources
(Lee and Gopinathan 2008 ).
On the other hand, globalization points to global war for talents that it is even
more critical for Singapore where there are very limited human resources (Brown
and Lauder 2001 ; Ng 2013 ). In order to make up the “brain-drain” problem and the
trend towards an ageing society with very low birth rate, the policies of
internationalizing higher education and making Singapore an education hub in Asia
are not only for the sake of enhancing the international standing of local higher
education institutions but also for recruiting more non-local and international stu-
dents to study and eventually stay and work in Singapore. The call for foreign talents
through the means of building an education hub also serves the needs of population
and immigration policy to get more foreign talents into Singapore for they are con-
sidered capable to generate new knowledge in creative and innovative ways.
M.H. Lee