PM Lee Hsien Loong at the Singapore Institute of Technology Dialogue with SITizens 2016

Mr Ng Yat Chung, Chairman, Board of Trustees, Singapore Institute for Technology

Professor Tan Thiam Soon, President, Singapore Institute for Technology

Distinguished guests

Professors, students, ladies and gentlemen

Very glad to be here for the first SIT Dialogue with SITizens. You have chosen a very apt theme – "Preparing for the Future Economy", which focusses on two important question. First, the future – what it will look like? And secondly – what can we do to prepare for it?

To know how to prepare ourselves for the future, first we got to understand where we are now, where we stand. You are studying at SIT, preparing to start work, at the moment when our economy is at a turning point, entering a new phase in our development where the jobs available, and the skills in demand, are already different from what used to be and are continuing to change rapidly.

Your working careers and your pathways in life will be very different from your parents' generation. You will experience more changes. Your lives will be less predictable but also, I believe, more varied and rewarding.

So, confronted with these changes, it is quite natural for all of you, or many of you, to feel uncertain and to ask yourselves: Will there be a future for us? What will it look like? 50 years ago, when Singapore became independent, our pioneers asked themselves the same question. Singapore had suddenly and unexpectedly become independent. Our old strategy was to prosper as part of the Federation of Malaysia and that strategy had collapsed. We needed a new strategy and we thought about it. We decided to open our economy, to attract MNCs, foreign investments, to market to the world, make the world our market and to make ourselves a first world country. And because that strategy succeeded brilliantly, that is why we are here today.

Let’s take one generation as 30 years. It may seem a long time to some of you but actually 30 years is not very long. Let us look back 30 years and see how Singapore has changed. 30 years ago, your parents were about your age, on every count, our lives today are better than our lives a generation ago – per capita GDP in 30 years has gone up three times in real terms. We are healthier; we are living much longer; life expectancy has gone up. Now, in Singapore, it is 83 – it is one of the longest life expectancies in the world. Our housing has improved. Our public transportation has got better too. You may smile but it is true and we are going to make it get even better, especially with the help of some of your sustainable engineers.

So if you look forward another 30 years, to your children’s generation, what do you expect? The world will be different – things will not stand still and if Singapore is still the same 30 years from now as it is today, we are in trouble. You will expect to see breakthroughs in technology – driverless cars, renewable energy, personalised medicine, artificial intelligence and more things not yet dreamt of which will affect all aspects of our lives – how we work; how we play; how we live; how we communicate; how we come together as a society. And I think if you take a 30 year timeframe, I would say despite all the current difficulties in the world economy, 30 years from now, the leading cities in the world – New York, London, Berlin, Shanghai, Sydney – they will continue to be vibrant, prosperous hubs of opportunities, where there is innovation; where there is culture; where there is influence. And 30 years from now, there is no reason why Singapore should not be in that same class, and we have every reason to expect to be on that list.

Why? Because we are highly connected. We are tech-savvy. We have earned a reputation as an outstanding place to do business. When companies look around the world to choose a place to invest, to set up a headquarters, to build a plant, Singapore is often on the shortlist. We are creating many jobs, more that will replace the ones which we may well lose as the economy changes. We are continuing to invest in our people, through a very good education system and we are investing in people who are hardworking and talented. When our students go overseas on exchange programmes or competitions, we realise that actually Singaporeans are not bad after all. You can go many places and you can compare yourselves to your peers, students in other countries or top universities and you know that you are not inferior to them. You can hold our own, be proud of yourself and people get to know us, have a regard for us. When we compete in international competitions, we do well. World Skills Competitions, we regularly come home with medals. International Olympiads – Physics, IT, Biology, Mathematics, Chemistry – we often come back with medals. Small country, little red dot, but a lot of firepower. All in all, if there is any city in the world which is well-placed to do well in the new world economy, Singapore should be that place.

Right now, we are experiencing difficult economic conditions. Growth is slow all over the region, in fact, in many countries in the world. Our exports are flat. We are feeling the pains of restructuring, but not yet seeing the dividends of our hard work. But we are pursuing all the right strategies, and I am confident that given time these strategies will work for us. You compare yourselves with your parents' generation. You have got the benefit of that 30 years of hard work. You are at a higher base and you are poised to take Singapore further forward.

We can continue to grow our economy, to raise our incomes, to improve all our lives. It will not be as fast as we did over the last 30 years when we were making seven per cent per year on average year after year, but it will be as fast as other economies, two to three per cent a year if we work smart and work hard. And more than that, we are in a position to make Singapore a more endearing and fulfilling home. Because many of you have dreams which go beyond just climbing the corporate ladder or earning more money. You want to contribute to the community, care for the environment, or you want master a skill, or an art or sport that you are passionate about and all those are part of what makes Singapore tick and must be part of Singapore’s future. So, ultimately, how well Singapore does, and what kind of society we will be a generation from now, depends on you, on the next generation of Singaporeans. Whether you make the most of the opportunities that you have. Whether you are resilient in the face of uncertainties and change. Whether your generation works together as one united people, just like your parents’ generation and their parents’ generation did. You are our hopes for the future.

We have invested in you and we have created for young Singaporeans today many more opportunities than your parents ever had. 30 years ago, the education system was not like it is today. At that time, just five per cent of students entered university, and another five per cent of students had the chance to go to polytechnic – total tertiary education, 10 per cent. Today, education opportunities have opened up tremendously. In your cohort, one-third almost, entered university, 32 per cent. Nearly another half go to the polytechnic, 47 per cent. And the rest, most, get a place in the ITE and a chance to move up beyond the ITE. You have so many more options and pathways. The ITE and diploma courses prepare you for new jobs that are available. There are new courses of study, including cross-disciplinary programmes that train you in workplace skills that are in-demand. And you have the opportunity to cross over. You may go one way but you may change your mind, you do well, you cross over. You can go from from ITE to polytechnic; you can go from polytechnic to university. Even in university, the options are more flexible and open. And I think many of you have come that route – many of you from the polytechnic and some from the ITE too.

So the education opportunities have opened up but it is not just schools, it is also making sure that you having earned a good certificate or diploma, you have skills and you have knowhow which you can put to use and will help you to find good jobs and achieve your aspirations.

To create more university places to produce more graduates, print more degrees, it is not so hard – it costs a lot of money – but it is not so hard. You can do it. The difficult thing is to train people and to build the economy at the same time in such a way that after you graduate, having done something that you want to do, there is a job that is available, which will match your aspirations and what we have invested in you. And that is much harder because you have to create the jobs and you have to meet the expectations. And sometimes we have to manage the expectations and say, well, you cannot get exactly what you want but you get something like what you want. Other countries struggle with this problem too. Many European countries which have proliferated graduates have found that they cannot find jobs for them and are now trying to tighten up. In Asia, if you look at South Korea and Taiwan, nearly everyone has a degree of some kind, nearly everybody, but many graduates cannot find jobs to match their degrees and youth unemployment is a serious problem. That is why in Singapore, the Government has established universities and education institutions with applied pathways, leading to qualifications which are relevant to the industries. So the polytechnics and universities, particularly SIT and UniSIM, are very good examples of that. And that means the opportunities are there, to get a degree first or at least a good qualification and ultimately, a job, a career, and a bright future. That is why in Singapore, we have do not have a youth unemployment problem, unique amongst many of the developed countries.

We are also creating opportunities for Singaporeans by connecting with the world. For years, we have been inviting MNCs to invest in Singapore. And today, we are still doing that, but we are doing much more. Whenever I travel, one item on my agenda is almost always the economy and jobs. How to create opportunities for Singaporeans by using our network, by building our reputation, by developing our linkages – creating opportunities in Singapore but also overseas for Singaporeans to work abroad, for our companies to go abroad, in the world, in the region.

Recently, you may have noticed I have been on the road a lot. I have made a series of overseas trips. Every one of those trips has had an economic component to it. In China, I visited Chongqing. Chongqing is where we have a G-to-G project with the Chongqing city government, focussed on modern logistics and connectivity. Our companies can go there, operate there, link up Chongqing with the world and at the same time, link up not just in terms of logistics and physical transport but also financial services. So linking up Chongqing with Singapore. For example, for companies in Chongqing where they need to raise Renminbi, they are able to do so in Singapore and therefore there is business for our banks. There are jobs in the financial sector for Singaporeans.

I went to Japan. I met CEOs of Japanese MNCs. Every time I go to Japan, I do that. We know many of them because a lot of the Japanese MNCs have been in Singapore a long time. All the big Japanese MNCs are here. They are either clients of EDB or they are clients of IE Singapore, like the trading companies, Marubeni. Or the banks, such as Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, are encouraged to build up their businesses here by MAS. So when I am in Japan, I meet them, and they tell me how they feel about the Japanese economy; they tell me how they feel about Singapore and the region, Southeast Asia; they ask me what they are doing about the region and they share with me their plans. I encourage them to do more and I am happy to tell you this time, they were satisfied with what is happening in Singapore with their businesses here and quite keen to expand their businesses in Singapore, and I encouraged them to do more.

I went to India. In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi talks about 100 smart cities. Singapore, we are building one. In India, they have 100. He asked what we can do to work with them. We said 100 is beyond our scope but one or two, one by one, we can do. And we are doing one of them, in Andhra Pradesh, they are building a new capital from scratch, green fields. It is called Amaravati and they asked us to do the master plan. We did the master plan. Now they are tendering out the master developer and a Singapore company is bidding. We are hopeful that we can get the contract to be the master developer. That is a very big project for us. Why is there this link? Because we have been cultivating the relationship for a very long time. The Chief Minister is Mr Chandrababu Naidu. You may not have heard of him but he is a very capable man. He was Chief Minister more than 10 years ago. The last time I was in Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, I met him and talked to him. This was about 2004. After that, he lost the elections. It happens when you are in politics. We kept in touch with him. We invited him here. We engaged him. He knows us; we know him. Last election, he came back in. His party won. He is now building a new capital because the state split into two. And the old capital is been given to the new state of Telangana and he is going to the old state of Andhra Pradesh. He is going to build a new capital in Amaravati and he has asked us to master plan and now we are bidding to be the master developer. Business – how do you get it? Developing the connections, building up the reputation and then delivering. We get it.

Then I went to Australia. What did we do there? We signed an upgrade of the Singapore Australia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA). There are many things but one of the things it does is it will make it easier for Singaporean professionals and entrepreneurs to go to Australia to work and Australian professionals and entrepreneurs to come to Singapore to work. It is a reciprocal arrangement – works both ways but it means opportunities for Singaporeans to go take advantage of the opportunities there. And beyond that, the Australians are setting up a “Landing Pad” here. A “Landing Pad” meaning a start-up place for promising Australian companies to come to Singapore, to use Singapore as a base, to do business in the region. And if they can use Singapore as a “Launch Pad”, then there are business opportunities for Singaporeans. They will hire Singaporeans; they will have business locally. It is good for us.

So as young Singaporeans, the world is your oyster.

PM Lee Hsien Loong

So, everywhere we go, we see partners who want to link up with us in Singapore. And the more we can have these networks. I think the more opportunities Singaporeans will have. So as young Singaporeans, the world is your oyster. Some of you wish you have been born in your parents’ generation. I think many of our parents wish they were born in your generation because the chances are all there – you have to seize them, make the most of them, and then you have to create more opportunities for yourself.

And to do that, you have to be resilient. We know the world is changing. You cannot predict how. You cannot predict when. But you must gird ourselves for whatever might happen, and adapt to new conditions as they come up. And from time to time, we are bound to encounter downturns and setbacks. And we have got to take them in our stride, have the toughness and flexibility to soldier on, and see them through. It has always been like that.

Today, from where we are, if you look back 50 years, steadily it looks like riding an escalator – up, smooth, upward, inevitable. But actually, at the time, if you were making the climb as your parents did and your grandparents, it was not so inevitable; it was not so easy. There were difficult and uncertain moments – when we left Malaysia, when the British forces left Singapore, when the global economy ran into oil shocks, global recessions, high inflation, and no growth. We were affected. Each time you are buffeted up and down. Security and progress were threatened and we easily could have run into trouble. But we persevered. We went on. It did not mean we were sure we would get there but we were determined to get there. And we pressed on. We adapted to the new conditions. Eventually, we got there. We have not arrived but we made progress. And so it is going to be with your generation – move forward steadily, resolutely, resourcefully. You have got to have it in you. Things happen, yes, we will take it in our stride; we will respond. We are not made of candy floss, or as the Taiwanese say, we are not 草莓族 (strawberry generation). But we are not like that. These are like durians, very tough.

One major uncertainty which we know is there, is the economy. Technology is progressing on the production line. Robots are replacing jobs. In the professions, AI is working with many people. Many industries will be transformed. Many jobs will be changed or maybe made redundant. Today taxi companies and drivers worry about competition from Uber and Grab, but already Uber and Grab is not the most frightening tiger in the forest because there are already people trying out driverless taxies, driverless buses. And a completely different kind of service; a completely different way of planning for urban transportation. And we have to go with that. You can say “Do not allow people to driver Uber cars”. When driverless cars come, can we say every car must have a driver sitting inside? It is like saying lift operator staying inside. Once upon a time, it was like that. 10 years from now, it will not be the same.

So we know that, but which new industries are going to come, which old jobs will fade away, which fresh skills are going to be in demand?

Nobody can predict for sure, but surely in the next 30 or 40 years of your working life you will see many changes, and will be affected by quite a number of them. One of the things which will help you to cope with this is SkillsFuture, which will make learning and adapting a lifelong endeavour. Our polytechnics and ITEs are implementing enhanced internships and Earn and Learn Programmes, covering many different sectors – aerospace, construction, logistics, maritime, visual communication, healthcare. So that after graduation, you can build on what you have learnt. The skills and knowledge which you have and transition more smoothly into the workforce and keep on learning while you are there. And the universities and polytechnics are also going on to cater to the needs for you to keep on learning after you have started working – setting up units focussed on lifelong learning like the initiative by NTUC and NTU, the collaboration which they announced earlier this year.

So the scaffolding is there. The support structure is there. It is up to you. Take it, use it, make the most of it. You need the resolve and spirit to take up the schemes – to switch jobs or move to a different industry, to learn, unlearn and relearn things all of your life.

I have talked about opportunities and resilience; these focus more on the individual. Indeed, your individual commitment and contributions are important to Singapore because each one must try our best in order for Singapore to have a best overall performance. But our real strength is that we are united, as a society. We work together. Not just working hard, but also working together and this is the secret of why we have succeeded all these years. Each one of our pioneers contributed their individual skills and their efforts but they were so much stronger because they worked as a team and transformed Singapore from a village into a metropolis.

BERI, the Business Environment and Risk Information assessing outfit. They had ranked the workforces in all the countries in the world and for many, many years, decades, Singapore has had the best workforce in the world. Why is that? Our people work hard. They are smart. They are well-trained. We may not individually be the fastest or the smartest in the world but we work together. Our unions, management, companies and government work together. We have a tripartite relationship. We adopt a win-win mindset. When things come up, we tackle them cooperatively, and there is give-and-take on all sides. And we remember that however important it is the thing we are arguing over, the most important thing for us is that we have a relationship; we have a trust and that has to hold over many, many issues. So you give-and-take on this issue because you fully expect that the next time, there will also be give-and-take on new issues which will come up. And that is the secret of Singapore. People come and ask, what is your secret? How is it you can you do this? The answer is well, in a way, it is a big secret, and in another way, it is not a secret. It is not a secret because I can tell you but it is a big secret because it does not mean you can do what I tell you we are doing, and that is to be able to work together.

When I go overseas and meet Singaporeans, it is always a warm feeling, whether I meet somebody at random on the street and he hails me “Hello Mr Lee”, or whether it is a gathering of Singaporeans in Ulaanbaatar, in Mongolia or in Canberra or in Tokyo. It is a warm feeling because we have a mutual sense of recognition, of camaraderie, solidarity, kinship. We feel that something draws us together. But this unity is not just a warm feeling, it is really the bedrock of our society. And we must not forget it, or take it for granted, as we build our home here in Singapore

SIT epitomises what I have talked about – creating opportunities, having a resilient spirit, being a united people. And making this speech in SIT not because I am telling you what SIT’s audience would like to hear but because I chose this place to make the speech which I wanted to make at an audience for whom this is the most directly relevant. Because actually this is the way Singapore works and SIT is the epitome of the way Singapore succeeds and has to succeed. SIT offers students the chance to develop yourselves through many different pathways, to explore a wide range of opportunities. Some of you worked for some time, different careers, before coming to SIT to further your studies.

Hariram s/o Thanasega Rajah, worked for 9 years in the Prisons Service. Now, pursuing his degree in Criminology and Security. Or Adelene Teck, an Occupational Therapist for 20 years, before she came to SIT to upgrade. Many of you who have not worked before have also upgraded yourselves, some from the Polytechnic, others all the way from ITE to Polytechnic, from the Polytechnic all the way up to university.

Finding opportunities which suit your aptitudes, approaching life with a can-do spirit and making a future for yourselves. When I visited you last January, I met some of you and I asked how they are doing and I am glad that since then, nearly a year, they are progressing. One of them, Felicia Yeoh has just started her career in accounting – already found a job. Another one, Tengku Muhammad Khalaf, now doing his one-year Integrated Work Study Programme placement at SMRT. And I am sure that many others are doing well too! Because SIT trains you in skills which are in demand, and will help you to find good jobs. Skills like Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering (Land), Systems Engineering or Telematics, which is important jobs given the infrastructure we are building – trains, airports, a smart city.

So many engineering projects, needing good engineers not just to build them but to operate them, maintain them, upgrade them, keep them up to scratch so that we are world class. The Japanese are very good at this. Their trains work. Their airports work. Their buildings are well-maintained. We can be just as good as them.

In Health Sciences, we need many professionals – Nursing, Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Diagnostic Radiography. The population is ageing. We are building new hospitals, community hospitals and nursing homes. They all need to be staffed. And we need many more such professionals. We bring in foreign staff because we do not have enough of our own but we must have some of our own, a core of our own to run the system so that we can build it, so that Singapore can be special and have that special character of Singapore.

The opportunities are there and you will find something if you chase it.

PM Lee

SIT takes a practical approach to learning, like the Integrated Work Study Programme – it immerses the students in a work environment during placement stints. Apply at the workplace what you have learnt in class and the programme brings industry to the school and the school to the industry. And it is a long attachment – eight months a year. At the end of it, you know the company and the company knows you. And if you have hit it off, they may offer you a job, and they often do.

We are seeing the results. SIT students quickly find jobs upon graduation, in fact within six months, 90 per cent find jobs. And the Accountancy students, who often go for their IWSP have already received priority job offers even before graduating, which must mean they have confidence in you. They have not seen your final exam results but they know the quality of the person. Please do not disappoint them in your final exam.

We are also helping our students to get a sense of the world, to go overseas, build up your exposure and experience. We have an Enterprise Immersion Programme which sends students to Suzhou, Beijing, Kanazawa in Japan, to Moscow, where you have opportunities to interact with entrepreneurs, to soak in the mood, to be caught by the bug or to catch the bug and to feel that you want to start something.

Yesterday’s Sunday Times had an article about the rising demand for cyber security professionals in Singapore and how the demand for them is going up. It is a growth industry because countries and businesses are getting more connected. Singapore is already highly connected. We want to be a Smart Nation. We all depend on systems, whether it is your handphone, whether it is your home computer, whether it is your office computer or whether it is connecting to the Government in order to renew a passport or to apply for an exit permit. System down, all work stops. We have to make sure that our system is secure – no bad hats come along, no DDOS and shuts us down, which people have tried. So we have been building career pathways for cyber security professionals. We have degree programmes for cyber security, including in SIT, and EDB offers fresh graduates attachment programmes with companies overseas.

So the Sunday Times article featured five graduates on a one-year attachment programme with Kaspersky Lab. Kaspersky is one of the big computer security companies, Russian companies. The headquarters is in Moscow. And these five students, actually new graduates, were at Kaspersky’s global headquarters, analysing malware, documenting new types of computer viruses, searching for threats that come through web browsers. There were five graduates on this programme, one was from NTU, and the other four, you will be very happy to hear, came from SIT. They are SITizens.

One of them was quoted saying “If I never left Singapore, I probably would have stuck with normal computer programming and wouldn’t have stepped into cyber security and found my interest” He is Lim Winwin and he graduated from SIT last year.

So it is an example of how we are creating opportunities, exposing you to the world, and developing your resilience in an open education system and how people are actually going for it and seizing the opportunities. But the SIT experience is not just about academic requirements and jobs. It is also a bonding experience to get to know one another, to work with one another, to form friendships and networks which will last your working career, and perhaps your lifetime.

I am glad that despite your full schedules, you find time to come together, to give back to the community, helping the elderly spring clean their homes, raising funds for the President’s challenge, using IT skills to design apps and programmes to benefit the community. It is an involvement which links you back to the society which nurtured you, which you belong too, and which has enabled you to come to university, enjoy the opportunities, study in SIT and do well. That is what it means to be a citizen of Singapore.

Because SIT is successful, we are investing more in it. We are building a new campus in Punggol, to bring together all of SIT’s activities in one place offering outstanding facilities, and with the opportunity to grow further. And we are going to integrate SIT Punggol with the surrounding industrial space and the public park so that you are a part of Punggol. You are not just a university by itself but you are in Punggol and connected to other things in Punggol. And this would enhance the applied learning curriculum of the university as well as your contribution to the community.

Launchpad@Block 71 taught us something. We started it, there is an incubator for start-ups. It is not very far from here so you must know about it. And it became so successful that it has originally grown to become part of NUS and created a buzz in the Ayer Rajah area

We would like to say we purposely did it like that but honestly, we just built it and we were just very happy to see it happen. But in Punggol, we will purposely do it like that. So with Punggol, we planned the integration for SIT because there would be a tech-park nearby. There would be industry opportunities for attachments, for connections, for research, for working together. And SIT Punggol will strengthen your identity – give you a mother ship to return to learn new skills or to contribute as to give back. As your President says, Once a SITizen, always a SITizen.

So we go back to the question that young people ask – Will there be a future for us? The answer is “Yes, there will”, provided you work at it: not just individually, but together; not just for yourself, but for one another and for Singapore.

One evening recently, a beautiful double-rainbow appeared in the skies, seen from many places from Singapore. Unfortunately, I was nose to the grindstone in my office and missed seeing the rainbow. But somebody alerted me over Facebook so I posted his picture and I invited people who looked at my page to share their pictures as well. And for a very short while, my Facebook page was flooded with beautiful photos and heartwarming messages. And the rainbow reminds us that rainy days are not always gloomy – they too have their share of happy surprises. So please remember this, as you chase your own rainbows through life. 20 years ago, Mr Lee Kuan Yew spoke to university students, and urged them to “chase the rainbow”. He was speaking to that generation of young people – perhaps a bit younger than your parents – and they were asking the same question as you.

Mr Lee urged them to go for it, to chase that rainbow, with the same passion that he himself had pursued his goals as a young man. Actually he pursued his goals with passion till his old age. But he said go for it. The opportunities are there and you will find something if you chase it. And they did, so Singapore today has progressed and they are still doing well. But Mr Lee’s message was not only for them – it is a timeless message, relevant to each new generation.

Now it is your turn. You will encounter challenges – rainy days, sometimes even thunderstorms. But if you press on through the storms and rain, the skies will eventually clear, and then, if you have worked hard to get yourself into the right place, you will find your rainbow. So be confident, aim high, and do well. And a generation from now, you will have built Singapore into something much better, something beyond what our imagination can dream of today and then you can say we have done our duty. Thank you very much.