23 September 2018

A new survey has shown that while students from the Institute of Technical Education may take a longer road to success, their qualifications also open doors to good jobs later in life.

The survey was commissioned by ITE to look at its graduates’ salary over time and whether they furthered their education.

The ITE offers 97 full-time certificate courses and over 30 traineeship courses, and takes in about 14,000 students a year.

The survey showed that 10 years after they completed their certificate courses. their graduates enjoyed a median monthly salary of $3,000 a month.

This means that their graduates’ median pay had more than doubled in 10 years.

The survey also found that 44 per cent had gone on to study for a diploma, while 15 per cent had gone on to study for a degree.

21 September 2018

A team of 40 Singapore students won nine medals and seven medallions for excellence at the recently concluded 12th WorldSkills Asean 2018 competition.

the Asean Skills Competition aims to boost vocational training and professional skills in young people.

The competition was held in Bangkok, Thailand, and drew youth participants from 10 countries who competed across 26 skill categories.

Singapore’s representatives participated in 20 categories and Singapore finished fifth overall.

In the previous edition of the competition in Kuala Lumpur in 2016, Singapore placed fifth as well. Singapore will be hosting the next WorldSkills Asean Competition in 2020.

18 September 2018

In 2017, 82.9 per cent of Singapore Institute of Technology’s graduates found full-time work six months after completing their final examinations.

In particular, over 80 per cent of graduates from the accountancy and hospitality business programmes received job offers from the companies they worked in before graduating.

The median starting pay of SIT’s graduates remained at $3,200, similar to 2016.

These statistics are from SIT’s latest annual graduate employment survey, which also reveals a slight increase in graduates opting for freelance employment.

The latest graduate employment survey for NUS, NTU and SMU show that 78.4 per cent of their graduates were in full-time permanent work last year.

17 September 2018

The Singapore Management University is reducing the number of core modules required for its undergraduates.

The university is also revising its core curriculum, which will be effective next year.

Under the new policy, students will have to take 12 core modules, which include community service and an internship, down from the current 16 core modules.

SMU will also be introducing a work-study option where students can take up a six-month internship during a school semester.

All this is part of an effort by SMU to get students to move away from just focusing on academic results.

Under the new Exploratory Course scheme, students can try out different courses without affecting their grades. A current law undergraduate could, for example, do a foreign language or pick up a psychology elective, and declare up to two of his passed grades for non-compulsory modules to be excluded from his cumulative grade point average (GPA) computation.

15 September 2018

The Singapore University of Social Sciences will be giving its alumni a $500 learning credit when they next enrol for new courses with the universitty.

The aim of the credit is to encourage the university’s alumni to enrol in new courses and pick up the habit of lifelong learning. After all, SUSS brands itself as the university for lifelong learning.

The credit can be used together with SUSS’s existing alumni support schemes, as well as the government’s SkillsFuture Credit scheme.

Recently also, SUSS launched a new College of Lifelong and Experiential Learning, which will be in charge consolidating SUSS’s various lifelong learning activities such as continuing education, training courses and overseas exposure programmes.

13 September 2018

Online retail giant Alibaba recently launched the Alibaba Talent Programme in Singapore with support from Nanyang Technological University and the Singapore Economic Development Board.

The four year programme aims to equip postgraduate students in Singapore with critical research and development skills, and is part of Alibaba’s moves to nurture future R&D talent from Singapore.

The first intake will start in January 2019, and is slated to consist of between 20 and 30 students.

As PhD students, the programme participants will spend part of their studies at one or more of Alibaba’s research facilities, including the Alibaba-NTU Singapore Joint Research Institute.

Apart from financing their PhD studies, the programme’s participants will each receive a monthly stipend of $5,000, with mentorship by a main supervisor from the enrolled university and a co-supervisor from Alibaba.

11 September 2018

Dr Robyn Anderson, Senior Lecturer for Education at James Cook University, says that great educators are not just teachers, but role models too.

She says: “As educators we provide our students with the theoretical knowledge and its application to practice in their respective professions. However, there is much in life that is not learned from a book but acquired informally through social learning. As such, it is important that as educators we also emulate the behaviours and practices that we are promoting.”

One of her ex-students, Ms Shareffa Hodge, is now a teacher herself. She credits the lessons she learned at JCU for helping her deal with students of her own.

10 September 2018

Singapore has started training its first cyber warriors, who will be equipped with the necessary skills to defending the nation’s critical information infrastructure.

The pioneer batch of nine Smart Nation Scholarship holders were selected from 233 applicants. The aim is to groom them to drive Singapore’s Smart Nation and digitalisation efforts.

Presenting the inaugural awards at a ceremony recently, Minister-in-Charge of the Smart Nation initiative Vivian Balakrishnan said that the Government had outsourced too much technology projects in the past, but this has to be changed.

The Smart Nation Scholarship is aimed at Singaporean students who have completed their junior college or polytechnic studies. It is offered by the Cyber Security Agency of Singapore (CSA), Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).