quote]Originally posted by equlus84:
erm......Robert, I think ur idea of broad-based education is true and false to certain extent. Yes, true, entrepreneurship is veri important and creating some international brand names for our country is veriimportant. BUT, not everi one is keen or totally excited abt being a successful businessmen like u. Singapore as a country needs to have various ppls with different skill base to cater for different sectors of the economy. Both Polytechnic and University are two different education approach that caters for different audience, BUT at the same time being absolutely vital to Singapore...... Poly's approach like wat u say from all your previous posts, teaches wat the industries require or wat is expected and at the same time introduce some business skills for the student. While university concentrates more on academic and R & D stuffs......[/quote]
Am I right to say that as citizen or student, we are concerned about jobs, economy, social and cultural cohesions and many other issues affecting our wellbeing. My view is that education impacts does impact the economy, our jobs and finally our wellbeing.
If our standpoint is self there is no issues that can affect us personally as we can always depend on our own personal abilities like creativity, entrepreneurship and determination etc to overcome whatever constraints that may be caused by government policies or actions.
In fact our society is being governed pragmatically to the exclusion of desirable values like cultivating a pro-people pro-business environment, empowering the people, mass participation in knowledge application or morality etc.
Am I right in saying that we desire to go to uni for all-round education to equip ourselves with knowledge, including new technologies as well and mould their character and abilities to think on our feet and solve problems objectively and be effective in our many quests.
If the above-stated desirable all-round uni-education objectives are acceptable then I suppose students should learn such values and be able to sustain such desirables in our lives.
So whether the uni in fact has in fact been able to turn out such desirable values in our students given the pragmatic nature of our society is another matter. We should not let the political environment distract us from pursuit of such values.
If we are to live meaningfully and carry on through life with contributions beyond ourself and not producing only bookish and academic people who are quick to show us their pieces of paper degree and expect people to give them higher jobs and higher pays etc., then there may be a lot of issues we need to discuss as citizens.
The hoi polloi or kopitiam people may not be too concerned with such values now. Many have been bought over by interim HDB upgrading benefits or other election goodies to care or comment on the wrongfully pragmatic governance philosophy currently adopted.
Citizens cannot ignore such values and sooner or later they may have to come back to such values to correct the wrongs implanted over the past years.
Some people would say "I will do what I like and study what I like as I want to be free and feel free to do as I like."
Good luck to such lasseiz faire and anarchism in this world. There is nothing wrong with such thinking which are in-born attributes which one has to correct and make amend of over time as one progresses in life.
As long as one has the passion and determination and treasure learning and entrepreneurship one will be doing well for the time being.
I do not mean that polys are the only place we could educate people to apply knowledge and be better knowledge workers better able to sustain our economic competitiveness through life.
Uni students have all the opportunities to upgrade and expand their traditional theoretical and conceptual or examination-targetted approach to allow our system to grow organically to expand to knowledge application. This constraints from the past are man-made and can be changed.
Holistic education and knowledge application are intertwined and cannot be separated. I hope I did not give the impression that only in Polys is our education pro-application. I have given Polys education to illustrate as examples of my point about practical broad-based education attuned to our future needs. In the past students go to uni to obtain general academic degree and upon graduation then decide to get certain jobs that best befit their educational training.
Today, new industries require knowledge-application ready workers not the earlier general academic types produced in larger numbers in earlier years. Poly education serves to deemphasise on theoretical and conceptual general teaching of worldly knowledge but concentrate in specific application of distinct trades and technologies.
Whether in Polys or uni, my view is that all students should strive to upgrade from theoretic examination-driven system to application packages to equip themselve with passion to apply what they learn and not be driven in more and more academic general paper chase for their own sake.
Yes, true, u do not need a degree to do business or become a successful entrepreneur. But in the Science and engineering arena, it just boils down to upgrading of skills and knowledge based economy. I would like to point out that one of the previous poster laments on how his skills become obsolent after time and how he wished he studied more on thermodynamics. By moulding students to the requirements of the industry or just plainly teaching the hands on stuffs may look like a smart move........ as the students are able to get jobs immediately. But, in this process the students may face problems of being obsolete in a few years time, unless he upgrade himsel..I'm currently a student from NTU, watever I typed above is based on my interaction with frens from poly that enter NTU.
I do not think that poly education being tied to knowledge application does not equip students with theories or concepts useful to larger issues of management. It is not true that whatever they learn will become obsolete in a few years. Poly students who are knowledge applicators do get fair opportunities to supplement their application learning with management, economics and philosophy. Their differences from uni is the emphasis laid in the area of knowledge application.
The medical sciences taught in the uni have gone increasingly high-tech. So in every field not just the poly learning, knowledge is being displaced by newer thinking and new technologies not just in computer software, or chip designing. Constant relearning is a necessity to uni students too depending on what he is pursuing.
In the past my teachers have been talking abt the challenge the rising China and India have on Singapore. In the past, I dun understand, but after first-handed experiencing in the campus itself, I starting to feel the heat. NTU is literally turning to a mini China or India. Many of these folks come from all over China or India under the government scholarship. Throngs after throngs. We also must not forget China and India by in their homeland, are both growing at an amazing rate. A China fren of mine from Fujian once told me that his area itself have at least 8 to 10 technological university and countless number of polytechnic. 
. This really serve as a wake call to me to strive harder and push myself harder so a to survive the competition. ....... I'm currently studying material engineering, which is a course having onli 8yrs history and onli a small student population. But you could see quite a fair number of PRCians...
We are now in an age of fast changes due to the rise of nano-technology where existing methods of production are fast becoming obsolete being replaced by soft-ware operated smaller tools, equipments and processes.
Such nano-technology leads to the rise of software programming which is one area demanding our attention. This is an important factor which has resulted in Japan losing its competitive edge to US in electronics in the advent of nano technological advances led by Micro-soft/IBM/Intel etc.
Do we still want to produce many students to do laws, general science, economics and sociology etc. Yes in order to run the economy we need all these different specialists but we now find shortage of software and chip designers to operate newer nano equipment or there is a need to rethink and reset our education priority and change it to be more knowledge-application based and we can benefit from such re-think.
Poly and technological univerisities may exist to teach students to learn hands-on skills but they might not produce good students because of their lack of understanding of overall perspective to apply knowledge to create passion and creative and innovative culture needed in larger challenges.
So if China and India are to succeed in their upgrade, they will have to attune knowledge applications as the key approach in running these various technology universities. If we cannot do so in our uni or poly in knowledge application approach, there will be no reason for them to send their students here to learn from us one day...It may happens over a few years as new thinking in the third-wave economy is happening too at great speed.