Advantages of autonomous status
Appointment as 1st president of SMU
Career and experiences in Singapore prior to joining SMU
Choice of President (2022)
First involvement with SMU
First tasks as President
Garden metaphor
Goals as President
Inaugural Convocation
Internal and external role
Leadership style
Learning & delegating
Role of the President
Roles and responsibilities
SMU presidents (2022)
The educational scene in Singapore
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Advantages of autonomous status
Howard HUNTER -
Appointment as 1st president of SMU
Janice BELLACE -
Career and experiences in Singapore prior to joining SMU
Arnoud DE MEYER -
Choice of President (2022)
HO Kwon Ping -
First involvement with SMU
Howard HUNTER -
First tasks as President
Janice BELLACE -
Garden metaphor
Lily KONG -
Goals as President
Arnoud DE MEYER -
Inaugural Convocation
Janice BELLACE -
Internal and external role
Lily KONG -
Leadership style
Howard HUNTER -
Learning & delegating
Lily KONG -
Role of the President
Howard HUNTER -
Roles and responsibilities
Ronald E FRANK -
SMU presidents (2022)
HO Kwon Ping -
The educational scene in Singapore
Arnoud DE MEYER
We’ve been able to experiment and try different things and without having to ask permission. We have a lot of flexibility in terms of budgets. To some extent we’re bound by what the capitation grants or research grants are for. But to a large extent we have a pot of money that comes from a variety of funding sources and the administration together with the trustees can decide how we allocate it. So we may allocate more in this direction one time and more in that direction another time. And I’ll compare this say with the United States state universities with which I’m most familiar. Most of their budgeting is line item so when the legislature approves a budget for the university of such and such a state, that means if you’ve got a million dollars in this line for library acquisitions, and you only need $700,000, you can’t take the excess $300,000 and use it to buy equipment for the medical laboratories because that’s taking it from one line to another.
We have that flexibility. We can make reasonable decisions about how you allocate and deal with budgets and that’s a very important thing. We also have a lot of flexibility on internal curriculum development. Now if we’re going to start a new school or go off in some new direction, we have to present a case to the Ministry of Education after trustee approval, and explain why we want to do that and get the okay. But otherwise we operate really quite independently.
What happened in March is I was contacted about my ability to serve as a special advisor to the Chairman of the board on certain terms and I emailed back that I would be pleased to do that but that I was stepping down as deputy dean. This was to Ho Kwon Ping. I wrote back and said, “You would have no idea I’m stepping down as deputy dean and I’m having scholarly leave for next year, what’s owed me.”
So I said perhaps, so I would be happy to do what you were asking and I have the time to do it but you might want the person who’s the deputy dean of the Wharton School, and if that’s the case, I understand completely. And then 48 hours later, I got an email saying essentially well then we’ll make you this offer and the offer was would you be the first president.
My earliest contact with Singapore was in 1984. I used to work for an institution called INSEAD, which is a global business school located in France. And INSEAD had a Euro-Asia Centre, small centre that was doing both teaching and research in Southeast Asia mainly, in those days.
Then because of my interest in Asia, at some moment in time in 1995, the institution asked me to become the director of that Euro-Asia Centre, that particular centre that I was referring to before, which then brought me very often to this part of the world.
And that’s when I started coming here more than on an occasional basis to do a bit of teaching or a bit of research. But when the board asked me to do a feasibility study for INSEAD—of what to do with these activities of the Euro-Asia Centre and with the activities of INSEAD in Asia—I remember in 1996 I took on that task from the board to do that feasibility study. I spent a lot of time in this part of the world, visited eleven cities, talked to the equivalents of the Economic Development Board in the different countries here, to try to figure out what to do.
It all took a bit more time than we had hoped for, but in September 1998 we signed a deal between EDB, as a representative of the Singapore Government, and INSEAD to set up a campus of INSEAD here. So I came to live here, in December of 1998, so that sort of gives my first exposure to Singapore.
And that tied in probably with a choice of president. The first three president we had, were from an American educational background. The fourth one, I clearly even pushed against the tide of the board and said I really didn't want another really excellent American University, undergraduate, university professor. We had three very good points. I already wanted someone who would take us into graduate studies and into research. And by the way, that also tied in with another phase. I mean, when you talk about the next phase, part of that was engrain research into graduate studies. But also very importantly, no longer identifying herself as being an American style university. But an SMU style university, which meant getting away from purely saying we have American style pedagogy. So, I wanted to have a non-American, someone who was also came from the graduate school side. And that was Arnoud De Meyer. So that was one decision that I think I did play a role in because the rest of the board at that time were saying, let's continue with the same thing, and I said no I wanted Arnoud. Arnoud of course then helped in that whole transformation. So that was one, second phase of the university and it's continuing all the time since then.
My first contact with SMU of any kind came about ten years ago. At that time I was provost at Emory University in Atlanta, and I was a member of the Emory faculty for 28 years before coming to Singapore, and served 12 years as dean of the law school, and then for a couple of years as interim provost during a transition period. And while I was provost I was approached about coming here to Singapore.
Ron [Ron Frank] sent me an email and asked if I could come over and spend about a week consulting with him and other members of the SMU faculty about several matters, one of which was about the possibility of creating a law school. And so I came in August of 2002 and spent ten days here.
I must say that I came away from a week of meetings within SMU and with leaders of the legal profession convinced that it would be a long time before there would be a second law school in Singapore because then, it did not seem that there was a great deal of support for the concept within the leadership of the profession at that moment, although there was some discussion about the possibility of postgraduate studies in law and some specialisations in that area. But I wrote a report for Ron and others about how the law faculty could develop and things it could do, and I remember Ron saying, “If we don’t have a law school we will have the best law department of any business school in the world.”
About 10, 11 months later Heidrick & Struggles, the executive search firm, contacted me and said, would you be interested in being considered to be president of SMU. And this was kind of a bolt out of the blue. But having been here and having seen what was going on and then being presented with the opportunity to be on the ground floor of the development of a new institution, it was very attractive, plus Susan [Susan Hunter] and I both had interests in Asia. So the opportunity to be in Asia, and with a new university, and with all of the ideas behind SMU was really quite attractive. By the first part of 2004 it had all been sorted out and agreed upon that I would come to begin on September 1st 2004.
It was sort of a real immersion. In other words, the day I arrived, there were 14 issues plopped on my desk to solve.
Firstly, we had no offices. The organizing committee was physically located in a room, one large room admittedly, of Wah Chang House, the chairman’s offices. And they couldn’t get one more person in there. So one thing that had to be done very very quickly was to find for a two year period, let’s say, the administrative home of the university. So I remember going around, not knowing Singapore that well, but going around looking at possible places so we could sign the lease. That was [how] we ended up in Goldbell Towers.
Another one, though and this was truly major, it had been assumed that we would be able to go into what was then the National Institute of Education, NIE, which was at what was called the Bukit Timah campus. And so in June of 1999, it was assumed, up until a few months before, that NIE would move out rather quickly and somehow this could be renovated, or at least some part of it could be renovated quickly so that we could start students in June of 2000. So we go out to NIE and are told that, “This is completely impossible because their new building had been delayed.” Once again I remembered, it was a day when it poured rain very, very heavily. It was just like, “It’s impossible.” So once again, where would we be? Secondly it was evident to me upon visiting NIE that it would need very substantial renovation and I mean very substantial. So then the next question is, “Where’s our temporary campus?” This became a wonderful question of dealing with the Ministry of Land [should be Urban Redevelopment Authority, URA] and all sorts of things because there isn’t that much land in Singapore that was suitable and we would be needing a temporary place, so that was going on. Tan Teck Meng was a wonderful help, so good at negotiating with so many people, just knew everything. Curiously it was the person who was head of NIE at that point, who made the suggestion. He said, “Let me point out a parcel here.” He said, “This you think is part of Bukit Timah campus but it is not,” and put his finger on the map and that’s where our temporary campus called Evans Road was located. But he was the one who identified it. He was very helpful. The next thing that was going on, all these things were going on simultaneously, the next thing that was going on was of course the planning for the permanent campus, which had started already but there was this issue of where we would be. I strongly wanted a city campus, so in the summer, it must have been July or August, Marina Bay had essentially been offered as a possibility. And I was not the one who suggested Bras Basah Park, I mean I would not have known, but when it was mentioned, as if to say, this is another area that would fit, I said, “Well that would be perfect.” Well, the amazing thing is the Government agreed. What I didn’t realize is this would, would be so controversial. So that was rather humorous in one way because I didn’t realize this. And also there was another event that occurred. The National Library was located on Stamford Road, and it was being announced right then that the National Library would be torn down, and for their current headquarters, but in the public’s mind, because it had just been announced that SMU would be on Bras Basah Park, somehow it became connected that we were also linked to the demolition of the National Library. Actually it [SMU] had nothing to do with it. It had been planned for some time, and had to do also with the tunnel that would be going through Fort Canning Hill. So it was very interesting to encounter that, but I remember going to the old National Library to essentially convey to the librarians that although we had nothing to do with it, we did regret any inconvenience due them. And I still remember, finally someone said, “You do realize, Professor, we’re very happy to be moving.” And that was very funny, because they were saying that this building is completely inadequate for a modern library of a nation like Singapore and therefore we would have to move to a new building and it has nothing to do with SMU. But that led Tan Teck Meng to realize since they would be our neighbour that at the beginning they could assist in running our library and that was a very fruitful collaboration. So this was all maybe in a two month period.I have been hugely encouraged by the reaction. I have had colleagues who said that the “what” in the garden which I had described in terms of the four “I”s: the internationalization, the integration, the industry, innovation, was something that they felt they could easily internalize instead of a laundry list of 20 things that we wanted to do. It had been distilled in a way that they felt they could walk around and actually repeat what it is we wanted to do. That was one of the things I was trying to achieve, that people would know and it would become instinctive, rather than scratch their head and say, what was it the president said of the 20 things she wanted to do? I can remember two or something. So that was a part of it, and the reaction has been positive. Everybody could recite that back to me and probably can do it in their sleep now.
The other part was much more in a sense, touchy-feely and much more relational, and it was about the garden metaphor that I had used. People felt like—at least the reaction I got from like maybe 50 different people who have spoken to me or written to me—all of them except one said that was a metaphor that really worked. Many people said they could relate to it. It makes sense when you say that we want to cultivate this beautiful garden for everyone. It was a happy feeling. There were those who said they can totally understand the need for some weeding periodically. They can totally understand the need for pruning periodically, and there were those who said we recognize the hard work behind gardening. So, the reactions were varied, but the metaphor worked I think for many people. As I mentioned there was just one person who said that it was kind of out there, but one out of 50 is not bad.
When I think about Gardens by the Bay and how large a garden it is with different parts of the garden, you have the domes which require different temperature, different treatment, you have the different ethnic gardens, etc. I use that as a metaphor because I don’t mean that the garden is just one monolithic whole. There are different patches in the garden. We all have our role to tend our patch of the garden, but the whole is a beautiful garden, and it is greater than the sum of the parts. My role, I think, is to identify —working with colleagues—what are those parts of the garden that we want? Do we want the domes? Do we want the ethnic patches? Do we want some outdoor garden? Do we want the gardens sheltered? Do we want a pavilion in the garden? And that is the next order of detail that we are getting down to that needs to be worked through with everyone.
So, if I say we are going to have more integration as part of the garden, how is that to be played out? Is it integration in interdisciplinary terms, for education, for research? Is it integration across the alumni-student cycle? Those are different parts of the integration garden, and we need to agree what integration looks like, and we need to find the right gardeners for the different practices of integration as such. We need to be able to identify the strengths and passions of the different gardeners, some of whom prefer to be working in a greenhouse and others who are very happy to be out in the sun, some who like to be tending to the pond in the garden and so forth. And so it is about good judgment as to what the strengths of individuals are, and we all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have blind spots. We can’t do certain things, and why do we then pursue a path, a track for an individual where that is where his or her weaknesses are? Should we try and match where the strengths are so that the individual comes to work, on a daily basis, feeling fulfilled, that my strengths are recognized and what I am doing is making a difference to the larger garden. It is easier said than done. It is definitely easier said than done. But I think the metaphor worked because people recognized that that is what we need to do, we need to recognize the strengths of different people, match the job and the strengths, and sometimes, to then move on from what is your strength to another area where you don’t have strength, but because you are interested and you want to learn, you are actually developing a different skill set as well. And as I said, all of this works very well in theory. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, to mix my metaphors.
First of all, I believe that a president is only a first among equals at a university. To some extent, a university is an organization or even an organism I would say, sort of an ecosystem where many people take individual decisions, have their own creative ideas. And in very, many cases, they don’t even need to have a lot of KPIs and objectives, they know what is needed to be done. They’re intelligent people. Our faculty, our senior management—they know what to do. What I believe is my role is ensuring that they know where we go, sort of having—I don’t even call it a strategy—I call it a vision, and that’s the Vision 2025 that guides their decision-making, that gives them the broad context in which they have to move and where they have to go. And so I hope that over the years, by repeating my Vision 2025, by putting the incentives sometimes there where I can nudge people to go in that direction, that I have been able to succeed in growing this university in the right direction. It could have grown in all kinds of ways, but that it has grown in the right direction to become a great social sciences university in this part of the world. So that’s my first point, that is as a president for the university—I think it’s very different from a CEO of a company, where you go for a very detailed strategy and that is then translated in all kinds of sub-objectives and sub-strategies and KPIs, and I personally don’t believe too much in that for a university. As I said, I believe in that broad framework.
The second driver in my management of the university is that I hope that people find this a pleasant place to work and all people. Now I know, I look at some of those websites that tell us of how displeased people are sometimes with their employers. I know that some people leave us and are unhappy. I always see that a failure for the university. We should create an environment in which people feel welcome and feel that they can develop themselves, and that they can actually use their best competencies in the best way. So, I hope that we can create that environment for our staff and faculty here at the university.
The third principle that I have is that I hope that people will collaborate. Now that is not easy at SMU. Universities all over the world are organized in a functional way—per school, per discipline. It’s actually the nature of how we are organized. We are, if I would exaggerate a bit, we are universities—I say not SMU in particular, but all universities—we tend to be organized in silos, and it goes to the DNA of what a university is all about. But this is reinforced at SMU by our architecture where all the schools are in different buildings. And where, if you’re in the School of Law, and I’m talking about faculty and staff now, they very rarely probably get into the School of Social Sciences and Economics at the other side of the campus. Perhaps, students move a bit more around because they take classes in different buildings and whatever. But overall, our architecture tends to reinforce this silo. So there is a big challenge, and I’m not sure I’ve always been very successful in ensuring that people collaborate across the different departments in the different schools.
But those I see as my three goals, that is clearly creating a vision, so that people can take initiative can be intra-preneurs, internally to the organization, ensuring that people know where they have to go and setting a vision. Secondly, ensuring that employees who come here feel that this is a welcoming environment, where they can deploy their capabilities and their competencies. And thirdly, hopefully working closely together with each other.
And leading up also we wanted a really impressive beginning, so let’s talk about the photo there of the inaugural convocation. That was my phrase, the inaugural convocation. In the United States, the opening convocation for some universities is not huge but a rather ceremonial thing. Since we would not have a graduation, a commencement for some time, I said, “Well let’s have, make convocation, opening convocation a big thing.” And that’s where we then seized upon the idea of having this gala, sort of inaugural convocation. It was Ho Kwon Ping who selected the site, the physical location of the university would be where we were having this instead of in a nice place that was air conditioned like Suntec City. The planning that was involved in having to put, you know get the tent and all this, remember this is a very small group of people doing all this organizing to put on a major convocation under a tent on Bras Basah Park, on a day by the way when it was pouring with rain. And we had guests flying in for this, and we decided to have some very exciting academic conferences at the same times. It was just quite amazing, and the Ministers would be there, Deputy Prime Ministers etc. It was very hectic.
The other thing when I look at this photo -- the small things that you never think of when they say you know if you agree to be the first president. Selecting the gowns that we wear, the academic gowns, but I’m very proud of the fact that they have zippers so that everybody looks very neat. The British don’t, things are always gaping, and I say women always look terrible in them. That’s why you have such a neat appearance except for the ones that are British, which are the ministers and the chair.
And the other thing was the mace which I had never in my life thought about. Tan Teck Meng and myself with the mace. Oh by the way the first six months, we picked the logo too, the tangram lion and that was a whole thing about the logo. So [in the photo] all these things I look at. I even liked the color blue and gold. That’s why we have blue and gold so it was a very…all these things. But it was a major feat to put on that opening convocation but very, very exciting. By the way, the person standing next to me, who came over, that was the Dean of the Wharton School, right there.
A provost’s role is much more internal. It deals with everything academic. The president’s role is both internal and external. Internal in the sense that at the end of the day, the president’s responsibility is for the entire university. And it is only that you have the key person of a provost who helps you with many of the internal academic things, but ultimately the responsibility is still yours. Added on to that would be other internal roles for the corporate running of the university. Issues to do with finances, issues to do with the long-term financial sustainability of the university, issues to do with risk management, safety, security, HR for the non-academic side of the house. That entire spectrum is also the president’s responsibility.
But over and above that, is an external function, and the external function is a function external to the university within the country but also beyond the country. And the key offices that I would have a great deal to do with, one would obviously be corporate communications and marketing, where it is about how we project ourselves, who are we as a university, how do we manifest a university that is vibrant, relevant and making a difference to society. Part of it is about projecting all the good work that the university does. And it is entirely possible that we do a lot of good work, but if we don’t have that machinery and the strategy to project ourselves well, a lot of the good work can go unnoticed. My role as president is to represent and re-present the university.
There is a second office that I would have a lot to do with and that is the international office. And that is about projecting the university internationally. It is about developing the opportunities internationally for collaborations. It is about making sure that the good things that we do are known much more internationally because that has a virtuous cycle in terms of bringing opportunities to the university.
Then, of course, there is the external world where I would have a primary responsibility, although I would not be the only one responsible for this, and that is advancement. That is about bringing resources to the university to do all the wonderful things that we want to do as a university. Imagination is free. Ambition can be free, but making it happen is not free. So we really do need to work at building a resource base that is robust, not just for the here and now, but for the long term. If I am to see myself as a steward, then my responsibility is not to steward the institution just now but for the longer term. And to the extent that I am able to work with all colleagues on campus because all colleagues have a responsibility or a role—maybe not a direct responsibility, but a role in helping with bringing in gifts to the university because people believe in us and what we want to do. It is my responsibility to shepherd everyone to do this as well as we can.
My attitude toward leadership or management or whatever has always been, that if you’ve got a good person in a job, let him or her do the job. Don’t get in the way. Now it may be that this particular dean has some different ideas from that one, but you have to let that play out and see how it goes. But not to be looking over people’s shoulders all the time about things, within certain broad guidelines. I mean there were some clear values that we wanted to maintain and structures and ideas about SMU. And so deans and others would be expected to adhere to that, but generally let them run their own programmes and stuff as much as possible. And the same for people working in other areas.
I like the fact that a university is such a multi-faceted place. If I just focus on the faculty, the myriad research questions that they ask, the sorts of things that they are sharing with their students in the classroom, I feel like a student very often and I am learning, and I am growing. If I look at the non-faculty side of the house, the expertise that people have that I couldn’t possibly have, I haven’t had the opportunity to learn and develop. So making a video, I don’t know how to do that. The deep finances that people work with, I find it fascinating to be learning all these things, even while I am supposed to be leading. And I feel very intellectually stimulated and alive as a consequence.
The misconceptions about the job. I think there are different kinds of misconceptions depending on the level of understanding of what a president does. There are people who have said to me, all presidents do is just kind of go for lunches and dinners all the time, because your job is to represent the university. It is a figurehead. And I recognize that different presidents will bring different styles and different approaches to their role, but I am not a figurehead. I don’t know how to be a figurehead. I feel deeply responsible. One of my colleagues in one of the schools said to me today, maybe you are overly responsible, and I said, I can’t help it, I was brought up in a convent. I went to the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus. So one misconception is a president is a figurehead. My, very, very mischievous 74-year-old brother, still mischievous at this age, said to me, “Do you have to go to work anymore now that you are president?” He got a glare in turn. So there is a misconception about that.
Other people think that the job of the president must be terrible. You must have so much and everything is on your shoulders. And, yes, it is, ultimately the buck stops with me in that sense. But people sometimes don’t understand that there can be senior members of the team who really do a lot of heavy lifting. So, a provost does a lot of heavy lifting that helps the president a great deal. So, the truth is somewhere in between. I am neither a figurehead nor do I have to do heavy lifting in every single area. Not everybody understands that. A former vice chancellor gave me this advice, “Find a good team, develop a good team, and delegate.” And I will hold that in mind.
SMU was a real experiment in terms of the curriculum for Singapore and the whole approach and style to it. And one of the responsibilities as president was to make sure that the integrity of that experiment was maintained, that we didn’t just sort of fall off into one pattern or another because faculty were accustomed to the way they used to do things or the way it was done where they were [prior to SMU]. So maintaining the integrity of that concept was very important.
Second was recruiting people. Now I am the president, I’m not going to be out recruiting assistant professors for all the different disciplines. But had to make sure that the deans had in place the processes and the funding to be able to do so and do so effectively and well. And to maintain an identity that was Singaporean but to make sure that we recruited people from all over the world to come in to the faculty, rather than just looking locally. Not that one should be negative about anything local but rather, as the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Education said at that time, “We don’t want the universities just churning their faculties around amongst themselves. We want you to bring fresh talent in from overseas, if you can.” Some who may be Singaporeans who’d gotten their PhDs there.
So faculty recruitment, maintaining the integrity of the experiment itself, and attracting the best possible students for SMU. You know we were still a start-up, and two very fine, distinguished, older universities, so we were in pretty heavy competition with them to get good students. And then behind all this is something that presidents always have to worry about and that is long-term financial stability. We had a lot of start-up money and that’s all well and good, but the president has to look 15, 20 years in the future to make sure that the foundation is there for financial stability, long-term, not just next year.
So number one, there's a junior class that need to get recruited. There are faculty that need to get hired for that purpose. If that's going to get done, they need deans. Two schools existed accounting and the business school and Janice had gotten those in place. But they sort of needed more support in their recruiting activity. But there was a proposal, which I don't think was officially approved when I became president, for an economics and social science school. But there was no dean, and no search process for a dean. So one of my immediate tasks was to find a leader for that school.
I mean we were growing at a rate, in staff and faculty, of around a third a year. And one of the issues that I was concerned about, and still am as the university develops, is the pace of development. Because, when you start it, here you are, adding students and years to a programme, and you're adding sort of a third of the content to the programmes in one fell swoop, and recruiting all the faculty, and getting the curriculum for that. At the same time, there's two new schools going on, and there isn't magic to print people who are academics who have the competency to manage all that process. So, we were thin on the management side, I would say, in those years. Again, a credit to the faculty, the staff, and the students a bunch of compulsive workers a lot of sweat equity was put into that university by every possible constituency that was involved: students, staff, the faculty, the administration, even the board, as it got more swept up in the affairs of the university. It was unreal.
I think we were very lucky. I think we had great presidents each time. I'm very happy for that because if you look at the other universities, while, if you go back, way way back. University presidents were there for life … and they became bureaucrats. Not a good scene. They became not just bureaucrats who became autocrats. They kind of ran their own little place very tightly. I think we broke with that tradition with having the first woman. Janice Bellace, the first woman, non-Singaporean, to be a president. Although for a very short period of time. And then we continue to have foreigners. But people thought that, oh, we'll always want to have foreigners, which was not at all the case. But the minute we could get … and through Lily, we have 3 firsts. First internal promotion because she joined us as a provost, the first Singaporean and the first woman. And Lily knows this, and we said to her 100 times that nobody gave her an easy time on the selection committee, which I chaired because she fulfils each of these. This was a very happy confluence of events. It was a very rigorous board where we looked at all the other candidates. And we began to get tougher and tougher, tougher meaning high-quality candidates from outside because we became more and more established. And Arnoud helped put us on the map. So I'm very happy that we've done this. But it does not mean that in the future may not be a non-Singaporean or something else. I think we've broken the mould also for university leadership, which is something that I think we're proud of.
I will answer that question on the educational scene and on the larger scene. So if I take first the larger environment—and I have been asked this question several times since I am back now for four months here in Singapore—I have boiled it down to four main differences. First of all, there’re many more people here. The country has grown in number of people. And you feel that. I find it personally—I’m a city person—I find that actually attractive, that there is more buzz, there is more activity, there are more people around.
Secondly, you can see the investment in infrastructure, the physical appearance of Singapore has changed. And I’m not only referring to Marina Bay Sands or what’s happening on Sentosa, but actually SMU, in the middle of the city, is a major change in the visual appearance of Singapore.
Third difference is something with which I have an ambivalent attitude to. That is, visually you see that this has become a richer country. You see more display of wealth. Is this because the country has become more wealthy or because people have become more conspicuous consumers? It’s probably a little bit of everything, but that’s my third observation.
And the fourth observation is that it has been a place with a lot of buzz. There’s a lot more cultural activity, arts activity, and of all types. It’s not only that I like classical music, but it’s not only that the SSO [Singapore Symphony Orchestra] has improved in its performances, but it’s at the same time, there is much more jazz. Some of the top singers of the world pass through, partially because of the casinos I suppose, but there are all kinds of activities. And also the investment that the Government makes in education for arts, it has changed considerably. So that is very different. And this last remark leads me then to focus more on the educational scene.
The three universities, SMU, NUS [National University of Singapore] and NTU [Nanyang Technological University] have changed dramatically. SMU, obviously, from nothing to what it is today. But also NUS and NTU have transformed themselves into clearly world-class institutions, or institutions that play on the world’s scene whose research is recognised by people elsewhere in the world. It’s interesting for me to see how eager some academics are to come and work here, something that was not the case in 1998, 1999, when I had to convince faculty from INSEAD to come and work here. But now it’s much easier to say, why don’t you come and spend part of your career as an academic in Singapore? So there’s been a dramatic change in the educational scene. And obviously the creation of the fourth university, SUTD [Singapore University of Technology and Design], and then the fifth institution, SIT [Singapore Institute of Technology], that attracts foreign universities here—it all builds up into a much more vibrant and forward-looking educational scene. I was saying earlier that in the ’90s, I thought that the higher education here was relatively middle-of-the-road, good quality, but to train local people at middle level, and the elite were going abroad. What I see now is the elite from elsewhere coming to study in Singapore. Some of the elite researchers in bioengineering or mechanical engineering, or whatever, nanotechnology—they’re coming here to Singapore. It is a dramatic change in the educational scene which I think is very good for us as SMU.
