The knowledge-based economy with the help of foreign talents.

On one of the lectures given by Dr. Lee we discussed Singapore, the island-state country. This country welcomes the foreign students, as long as the number of local citizens drastically falling from year to year. The initial part of this blog, I want to dedicate to some historical political economy positioning, then describe the policy practices in attracting foreign talents.

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The main stakeholders of Singapore in past time were the multicultural English educated people who initiated “People Action Party” (PAP) which got power after the independence of Singapore. The PAP rethought its approach from industrialization to education. Education started to play the significant role, where the government aimed on “knowledge-based” economy (255). 

Keeping the direction of knowledged-based economy, Singapore narrowed to seek “foreign talents” and established “the Global Schoolhouse project” (258). The Global Schoolhouse project was established with the purpose of financing universities to become “world-class”, attracting foreign students, reconstructing levels of educations for “the attributes  of risk-taking, creativity and enterpreneurialism” (259).

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Moreover, Singapore signed the alliance with Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) in November 1998 (261). The alliance involved two universities of Singapore: the National University of Singapore and the Nanyang Technological University. The main goal of the alliance was to attract foreign talents with the help of “bond-free scholarships for post-graduate in engineering”(261). As you know, MIT is one of the famous and the best university in the sphere of technology, so the “brand name” played its significant role in choosing Singapore (261). “The government’s trust in MIT’s capacity to contribute towards knowledge-led, innovation and entrepreneurship” (262). In addition, the foreign students are guaranteed to have a job after the graduation from the university. This sounds great!

Have you ever seen the country who are so glad to see foreign talents? So, pick your clothes up and lets go to Singapore, to have our PhD degree there.

Reference

Sidhu, R., Ho, K. C., & Yeoh, B. (2011). The global schoolhouse: Governing Singapore’s knowledge economy aspirations.                     In Higher Education in the Asia-Pacific (pp. 255-271). Springer Netherlands.