“I didn’t do well in school last time and didn’t go to good schools. I think employers won’t want the kind of qualifications that I have.”
As a young adult embarking on his initial foray into the “real” world of work, I have heard the above statement often enough from my peers. This is all the more so because I attended a neighbourhood school near my home in Ang Mo Kio, went on to a Polytechnic, then got a degree through a private education institution in Singapore. Last year, I completed my Masters at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The statement offers a number of insights into how our society views academic credentials. The schools that one went to and the grades one got continue to inform an employer’s assumptions of an individual’s intellect and readiness for employment. One’s academic record is a lifelong marker of one’s worth, ignoring other positive attributes.
The experience of my peers suggest that we live in a system that perpetually rewards those who did well early on in life, and is less than forgiving towards those who didn’t or who were late bloomers. This, despite them possibly having the skills, initiative and mindset that will make them employees of choice.
How does this play out in the local job market?
We have witnessed an intense paper chase in Singapore. In 1990, 7.2% of residents aged 25-34 had university degrees. As of 2014, this figure stands at 52%. In his book Antifragile, the author Nassim Nicholas Talebaddresses the mistaken assumption that “lecture-driven knowledge” leads to prosperity. On the contrary, he says, it is wealth that leads to the rise in education levels.
Our well-qualified workforce has not resulted in a productive and efficient labour market – data released this year shows that it has been Singapore’s third consecutive year of labour productivity decline.
What do the head honchos say is impeding productivity in Singapore? The results of a 2014 survey conducted with 150 Chief Financial Officers from Singapore by Human Resource consulting firm Robert Half rated “Motivating employees” (54%) as the key to raising productivity of their teams. “Improving training and development of employees” (40%) or “better adoption of technology” (25%) were ranked lower. In this regard, it is possible that fast-track career schemes for new hires, that select individuals based on academic qualifications, disenfranchise others who could punch above their weight with the right grooming and motivation.
SkillsFuture and what it looks to address
There is now a national push to encourage the workforce to hone deep and specialist skills for an economy continually disrupted by new technology and innovation. As part of the SkillsFuture scheme, announced earlier this year, over 2 million Singaporeans aged 25 and above will get an initial $500 to use on courses ranging from early childhood education, to culinary skills, to language lessons.
But SkillsFuture represents a lot more than an “Edusave” scheme for adults, if one may use the Education Ministry’s funding scheme for younger students as a comparison. Fresh polytechnic and Institute of Technical Education graduates will be given a headstart in jobs related to their area of study. Supervisors and managers in Singapore’s small and medium sized enterprises can also get help with leadership training under the scheme. It sends a signal from the top that staying competitive in the changing economy means renewing existing and learning new skills, and not just depending on past grades.
Our long-time fixation on academic qualifications, however, has left some parents and students sceptical about the SkillsFuture scheme. They typically take the view that a degree is essential to career progression, and point to how a university graduate may earn twice as much in starting pay than those from the ITEs and polytechnics. These mindsets will change only if we can move towards a system where salaries and hiring correlate more with work aptitude than credentials.
Establishing trust in the system
The civil service has taken the lead. From this August, non-degree holders will be hired under the same scheme as university graduates, where they will be similarly assessed for performance and potential from a common pool. To take it further, the Public Service Commission should reconsider its automatic placement of scholarship recipients into a leadership scheme. Instead, candidates for the Public Service Leadership Programme should be selected from a common pool, which would provide for more equitable competition. The same can be said for the Management Associate schemes in the private sector.
Employers elsewhere can also go beyond using academic qualifications to measure their employees, by giving more emphasis to previous employer testimonials, past internship or work experience, or a standardised test for all new hires. The promotion of diversity in the workplace should go beyond the physical characteristics of ethnicity and gender to include individuals with different backgrounds and life experiences.
Nurturing a risk-taking culture, making every school a “good” school and improving social mobility are among the ideals Singapore society continues to aspire to.
SkillsFuture can play a bigger part in this. It must not only be about the imparting of skills, especially when faced with an uncertain future where adaptability is key. It must also be about the recognition that through the process of unlearning and relearning, one’s formal qualifications matter less and less. The sum of these processes should better define the individual – and be an appropriate measure of their worth – than school grades. After all, in the “real” world of work, academic qualifications are crucial only insofar as they correlate to actual working proficiency.
Andrew Yeo is a Research Assistant (Special Projects) at IPS. An edited version of this piece appeared in The Straits Times on 27 May 2015.
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