Employment of Eligible Singaporeans at Autonomous Universities

The Senior Minister of State for Education (Ms Indranee Rajah) (for the Minister for Education): It is important that our Autonomous Universities (AUs) recruit academic staff based on merit, to ensure that they hire the best talent able to deliver high-quality education and conduct research that will benefit our students and Singapore.

All eligible Singaporeans are considered carefully and processes are in place to ensure that hiring is non-discriminatory. Applications for academic positions are put through multiple approval layers involving selection committees, Academic Heads of Department and Faculty Deans before final approval by top management. Senior appointments must be approved by the Presidents or Boards of Trustees.

The Government and our AUs are keenly aware of the need to develop local talent. This is why the Minister recently launched the new Singapore Academic and Research Talent Scheme to encourage more young Singaporeans to pursue an academic career. At the undergraduate level, an MOE-AU undergraduate scholarship has been launched for those who have keen interest and strong aptitude for a career in academia. Under this scholarship, recipients will be paired with NUS, NTU or SMU and benefit from academic mentorship throughout and beyond his undergraduate studies. The student will then be expected to apply for a postgraduate scholarship from our AUs, for PhD studies and post-doctoral stints. These postgraduate scholarships will be co-funded 50-50 by MOE and the AUs. This comprehensive developmental programme is only available to Singaporeans and is intended to prepare each individual for an academic career.

Under the Singapore Academic and Research Talent Scheme, we will grow the number of existing postgraduate scholarships for Singaporeans who are interested to do research and teach at our AUs. We intend to offer over 1,500 scholarships at both the undergraduate and postgraduate levels over the next 15 years.

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Additionally, our AUs also actively try to reach out and recruit Singaporean academics based overseas.

Mdm Speaker, I just wanted to ask the Senior Minister of State, I think the banks say the same thing when they talk about wanting the best talent. Hence, we have a lot of foreign employees in the banks, resulting in a lot of unhappiness. May I ask the Senior Minister of State, considering that university lecturers have huge influence on the minds of our many young undergraduates, would it not be better for us to constantly emphasise in employing more Singaporean professors or lecturers, so that they can emphasise Singapore values to our young undergraduates.

Next, MOM has the tripartite guidelines on fair employment practices with the view of strengthening the Singapore Core. Would that not similarly apply to academic places for universities? Because I really feel that we should emphasise employing or giving the best opportunities to Singaporeans to get academic appointments in the universities.

The third question is whether MOE tracks the number of university professors or lecturers who have gone overseas to lecture. As a result, basically, that is a loss of talent from Singapore to other overseas universities.

Mdm Speaker, I think we are certainly in agreement that we do want to have a very strong core of Singaporean academic talent. That is not just because of the influence that they will have on young minds, but also because it is important for our own research and development and our own academic pipeline, that we should have Singaporeans who are well-versed in the different areas of academia. The real question, I think, is how we should achieve that.

Mr Lim's questions had really suggested two things: that the HR director must be Singaporean and that you stipulate that, for funding, you must consider eligible Singaporeans. In a sense, when you are dealing with policy, policy has to be broad. We cannot micro-manage it. We are in agreement with the overall objective, which is, that you should have a strong Singapore Core in academia. How to achieve it? Most of the universities actually do, in fact, have HR directors who are Singaporeans. Two of them have had HR directors who are Singaporeans for the last 10 years. Another two, the newer ones, SUTD and SIT, have had, from the time of inception to present, HR directors who are Singaporeans. One university has had a HR director who is a PR. But the point is that there is still this issue that is being discussed.

You can see that recruitment is a matter not just of the HR director but at different levels. It is not a simple process; there are many layers to it. To the extent that choosing the

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right talent involves a degree of assessment of the candidates' knowledge, their background, their personality – that is something we can leave to the universities. But if the concern is to make sure that we do have a good local talent pool, that message has gone out clearly to the AUs and that is something that we are working towards. Hence, the scheme that I mentioned earlier.

Also, when we talk about eligibility, the question is how you define "eligibility". Let us just say in the context of law, for example, you could have three or four people who are eligible in the sense that they all have a background in various types of international law. But if somebody who is not Singaporean also happens to have worked in the UN and also happens to have extensive international experience, that may be of benefit to our students to have somebody of that background.

You can see that at the edges, there is some element of discretion that is necessary. We would prefer not to put in tools which make it too much like a quota, as it were. The overall and overriding objective is to make sure that we have a strong talent pool and to make sure that Singaporeans are given a fair opportunity to enter academia, continue in academia and do well in it. That, we are in agreement on and that message has been made clear to the AUs.

Madam, thank you for your indulgence. I just wanted to follow up with the Senior Minister of State. I read recently in the newspapers of 3 March this year, that NUS Yale had hired 70 academic staff, of whom only 14 are Singapore Citizens or Singapore Permanent Residents (SPRs). To me, that is really a disproportionate number of lecturers. I know NUS Yale is not an AU but, surely, there is something that we can do to ensure that students who enlist in universities based locally are taught by a majority of Singapore lecturers, instead of a large number of foreign lecturers. Otherwise, we will just lose our Singaporean identity after a while.

As the Member has pointed out, Yale-NUS College is not an AU. It is still at an early inception stage. So, we will monitor it and track and see how it develops.