Again we wanted SMU to have a different approach to admitting students from NUS and NTU. The SMU council, chaired by Mr Ho Kwon Ping, met with the faculty, with Janice Bellace who was the president, and they thought that they would have a different approach rather than just relying on academic grades, which was how NUS and NTU admitted students at the time. It was a brave decision because people are not used to it. The faculty, and particularly Janice Bellace, did a great job in going out to the junior colleges, talking to the teachers and explaining what they were looking for, talking to students to attract them to apply for SMU. Since then the approach may have been modified a little bit with time. Both NUS and NTU have also modified their admissions process. So I think that this is another way that SMU has been able to contribute to Singapore.
Fortunately the Bukit Timah campus of the former University of Singapore was available. It was not occupied and SMU took over that campus. We renovated some of the buildings and it served SMU well for a number of years while the permanent campus was established. For the site of the permanent campus, again, I felt that, as far as possible, it should be different from NUS and NTU which are located in basically the outskirts of Singapore, in the suburbs—NUS in Kent Ridge and NTU up in Jurong. If it’s going to be a business university, then ideally it should be located within the city. That took a lot of discussion within Cabinet because any place within the city will result in the use of extremely valuable land, from a commercial point of view, for educational purposes. But eventually I’m happy that the Cabinet agreed to the proposal to establish a city university within here in Bras Basah Road, different from NUS and NTU with a different constitution, with a different structure, and in partnership with the Wharton school.
Singapore is changing, our society is changing, our economy is changing. The aspirations of students and their parents are changing. So our university sector, the Government, the Ministry of Education will have to take cognizance of these developments and ensure that our universities change in accordance to the needs of society and our economy—to be alert and be prepared to take timely measures, which is what we have done the last thirty years. The last development was the establishment of this liberal arts college which the IAAP had recommended some four years ago. So long as we are prepared to take that approach and we have the courage of our convictions, I think the university sector in Singapore will continue to develop and will do well. There will be many challenges, but I see a very bright future for universities here as well as for Singapore.
Starting off SMU on its own was a big risk and we discussed it for a long time as to whether this was advisable because it’s very important for Singapore—whichever university we start—that the university should not fail.
So it was very important that the university should succeed, the degrees of the university should be recognised and accepted by employers. The university should be able to attract its fair share of bright students and be held in high regard by parents. Starting a university from scratch in the context of Singapore, a small and urban environment where parents and students would inevitably compare the newcomer as I said with a proven product, NUS and NTU, was a big risk.
Eventually I agreed when Mr Ho and his council said they thought that this was best. And essentially for three reasons. The first reason was a very substantive point—that if they wanted to set SMU in a different direction from NUS or NTU, it should start from the very beginning. It should be different. It shouldn’t be built on what had gone before. The second reason why I thought that this might succeed was the fact that the subjects which SMU were going to teach, business and management, would be very widely accepted in Singapore because of Singapore’s position as a business hub. So there would be a demand for such places. Then the final reason why I thought this could succeed was because, with the approval of the Cabinet, to allow SMU to establish itself as a city university on extremely valuable land. This would differentiate SMU from NUS and NTU. So because of these three reasons—first of all we should start completely different from NUS and NTU, secondly because the subjects were business and management which would be widely accepted in Singapore, and thirdly, that it should have a city campus which would differentiate it directly from NUS and NTU. These would give the new university a chance to succeed.
But, as you say the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The question is, “Will you attract students? Will they find jobs when they graduate?” That’s unknown. So SMU took in its first students in 2000. They graduated in 2003, 2004. And we’re very relieved that they were accepted well and since then seven cohorts of students have graduated from SMU and all of them have been very well received. So it’s been a success.
Let me start with early 1980s when National University was established, I believe, in 1980 as through the merger of the University of Singapore and the Nanyang University. That served as our only university in Singapore for about ten years. We only had one university. Singapore was different from other newly developing countries in the sense that we never proliferated the number of universities. We always felt it was very important to maintain very high standards, both in the teaching as well as in the student body and in the faculty.
By the late 1980s, it was clearly recognised that the demand for university places far exceeded what was available in NUS and therefore we started to establish another institution, first called the Nanyang Technological Institute in the late 1980s which eventually evolved to become the Nanyang Technological University in 1991 I believe. And between NUS and NTU these provided enough places.
But again, every ten years demand grows, so by the late 1990s it was quite clear that we needed another institution at university level. I was involved in studying what type of institution would be suitable. My view at that time was that rather than simply establishing another university, we should take the opportunity to further develop our university sector—provide differentiation, provide variety, provide new directions. NTU was different from NUS, so I felt that the third university should be different from NUS and NTU. There followed many years of discussion with the public, among the ministry officials, members of Parliament about what type of university would be suitable. It has to be something that’s relevant to Singapore, something that meets the needs of Singaporeans. Eventually we narrowed it down to a university that would be focused on management, on economics, on business which we thought would be complementary to NUS and NTU.
However, I thought that we should not just repeat what has gone before and try and take a new direction. Because both NUS and NTU had developed essentially from a British model, I felt that it would be good to look to the US for another type of university with a different model which could provide a new dimension to university education in Singapore.
So when I visited the US, I visited a number of universities, to discuss with them, to find out whether any of them were interested in partnering the Singapore Government in establishing a university in Singapore. The University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School were extremely enthusiastic about the possibility. At that time the Wharton School, recognising the growth of Asia, was trying to find a means of increasing their footprint here, and they felt that they needed to have a base here, but as usual they’re not quite sure how to proceed. Partnering the Singapore Government to form a management university in Singapore seemed to be the ideal. From the Singapore Government point of view, we would be in partnership with a very prestigious and well-known school of management in the US, the Wharton School.
Then the question came to establishing the actual structure of the new university in Singapore. Here, I felt that if it’s going to be a business school, we should look beyond the traditional sort of establishment people in order to form the council. I wanted to find somebody from the business world, preferably someone young. We had originally thought that we could build this university on the foundation of the Singapore Institute of Management because they had a school. But it was realised quite early that this was not possible, because it was quite difficult to graft something onto an existing establishment, and it’d be much better to start of completely new. I talked to Mr Ho Kwon Ping and told him, this is what we are going to do, and I think you could start the university on a new direction. Mr Ho’s response, quite understandably was he knows nothing about education. This would be something new for him, but I told him that this is what I thought would be very useful. It was also crucial at the time that Janice Bellace, who was then the deputy head of the Wharton School and who was a very strong champion of this joint venture, agreed that she would take on the role as the first president of SMU. I thought that was very significant, because with her appointment this would ensure very close nexus between SMU and Wharton. She did an excellent job in conceptualising the whole university, essentially starting from scratch, I mean, when she first started.
We decided that we would not establish SMU on the same legal grounds as NUS and NTU, because NUS and NTU were statutory boards, and in fact, they had to be established by Acts of Parliament. For SMU we thought it would be better to start something new, and therefore we established SMU as a company, not as a statutory board. As a company there would be more flexibility but since SMU would be dependent on the Singapore Government for funding there has to be some relationship to the Ministry of Education, so this has to be discussed with the MOE officials. Eventually we agreed that what MOE would be involved in would be to approve the budget, very broad guidelines. As far as the staffing was concerned, the only two appointments which the minister of education would need to give approval to, or would have his agreement for, would be the chairman of the council and the president of the university. All other decisions would be left to the SMU council and the SMU management to work out. I think that is a very good direction because subsequently both NUS and NTU were established along this model and I think the results have been very beneficial.
In a sense, where does SMU fit in within the university landscape in Singapore today? At the last IAAP [International Academic Advisory Panel] meeting in September last year, one very important observation was made by the IAAP members that the Singapore education system which had been essentially developing steadily for the last— from 1980 to 2010—thirty years, had reached a level when essentially it is matured.
So the IAAP said that in a sense that, essentially, you have a complete university landscape already. There is sufficient variety for students and their parents, there is sufficient variety of courses, there is competition. Essentially, as I remarked at the press conference, what the IAAP was telling us, essentially, is that you have run out of people to learn from. We used to learn from a lot from the US, from other countries. Our university sector has now reached a level where, essentially, the IAAP’s conclusion was that the easy part is over.
When we started SMU we looked at what Wharton was doing, we just transplanted it here. When we started SUTD we looked at what MIT was doing. Now you are at the stage where, who do you learn from? My conclusion from the IAAP’s remarks was we have now earned the privilege of making our own mistakes now.
I’m happy to see that it’s now firmly established, can more than hold its own with NUS and NTU. From my conversations with the students, with the faculty, with Wharton, and time to time with the parents on my visits to SMU, I think that it’s been a great success. It has contributed substantially to Singapore and it’s also benefitted NUS and NTU because they have looked at what SMU was doing and they felt that they could change some of their practices and I think much for the better.
I would say that what we gained from starting SMU was to recognise the importance of having an open mind—being prepared to take a fresh approach, even an unconventional direction—provided that you discuss it well, provided that you do your groundwork. Ultimately, and this is where the university sector and SMU has benefitted very much, with the very strong support of the Cabinet and the Singapore Government—none of this would have been possible without the support of the Cabinet and the Government—they were prepared to take a risk and I think that the results have shown that the risk has been worthwhile. But there was no assurance from the beginning that this was going to be successful. SMU could have gone another way.
Oh yes, we had a long discussion particularly with the officials in the ministry, with Mr Ho Kwon Ping, a lot of possible names were discussed. What would you call it? Singapore University of Management and so on. It’s very important that when you find a name that you also realise it has to be a good acronym because people will have to refer to it and eventually, like many of these things, we ended up with the first suggestion which was Singapore Management University after going around, several months.
One of the peculiar characteristics of my career is that whichever ministry I was in, whichever capacity I was serving in, either in the public or private sector, the Singapore Government had always asked me to look after university education. I mean, my day job may change from time to time but my interest was in university education, and I was happy to have the opportunity to work with successive ministers of education to help to develop the university sector grow.
It’s been a great satisfaction to see SMU grow—from basically what was a piece of paper into now a thriving institution—well recognised in the world, well accepted by Singapore parents, Singapore students welcomed by employers. SMU graduates being very well regarded, making a contribution to our economy and to our society.
Yes, I was happy to. Mr Ho Kwon Ping invited me because this was the first cohort. So I was happy to accept it. Because in a sense, it’s a completion of the first part of a long journey. The work of establishing universities never ends. A university is always an ongoing project, but this was a significant milestone I was happy to see—that SMU had managed to cross that very significant point. Since then, I’ve watched SMU grow, I’ve had opportunities to interact with senior establishment here, with the faculty, and I’ve seen them establishing new schools including the School of Law.
What started off as basically fifteen years ago as an idea has turned out to be a reality and something which has made a great contribution to Singapore and will continue to make a contribution to Singapore, Singapore parents, and to Singapore young men and women. I think that’s a great source of satisfaction.
One of the characteristics which many people have remarked to me about SMU—including employers—is the fact that they see SMU students as different from NUS and NTU students in the sense that SMU students are more outgoing, they’re prepared to take more initiative, they can present themselves well. This is because of the way the courses are taught in SMU, not in the lecture format, but more in the interactive discussion mode. It shows that when the students go in after A-levels, they are all the same of course, they all come from the schools in Singapore. But four years of a different type of education has shown that you can encourage students to have confidence in themselves, to be able to sell themselves, to present themselves well, and to be confident in interacting with their peers, with faculty, and later on with the public and with business people. This is one of the strong selling points. Enough years have now passed to make this a recognisable characteristic of SMU, and its one of SMU’s strong selling points.
I would say that what we gained from starting SMU was to recognise the importance of having an open mind—being prepared to take a fresh approach, even an unconventional direction—provided that you discuss it well, provided that you do your groundwork.
It’s been a great satisfaction to see SMU grow—from basically what was a piece of paper into now a thriving institution—well recognised in the world, well accepted by Singapore parents, Singapore students welcomed by employers. SMU graduates being very well regarded, making a contribution to our economy and to our society.
