Speech by Minister Lawrence Wong at the Singapore Institute Of Technology (SIT) Graduation Ceremony (Session 3)

Thursday, 17 October 2019

I am very happy to join you this morning for this SIT graduation ceremony. Today is a special occasion for all our graduands. Let me start by congratulating all of you on your achievements. I also want to recognise the many people who have stood with you along your journey – your parents and family members who are here, as well as the SIT faculty and staff who have guided you throughout your studies. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give another big round of applause to all our graduands and the family members who are here.

This is my first time attending an SIT graduation ceremony. But as Professor Tan said, I am not new to SIT. My journey started in 2012 when I was then-Minister of State in the Ministry of Education, and I chaired the committee to review the possibilities for university expansion in Singapore. At that time, 27 per cent of every cohort of Singaporeans were getting a degree in our publicly funded universities. We thought that there was scope to increase university places for Singaporeans, and we recommended increasing it to 40 per cent to meet the aspirations of young Singaporeans like yourselves. 

The important question at that time was how to go about this expansion of our university sector. We could have expanded our existing universities then, but we thought there was an opportunity to do something different – to add to the diversity of our university landscape and provide students with more choices to develop and grow. We studied in particular the model of practice-oriented universities overseas. In Europe, they call them the Universities of Applied Sciences, and they are very strong in countries like Germany where there’s very strong industry linkage. In the US, they have universities which offer what you call Co-op Programmes which combine classroom-based learning with practical work experience. These universities may not always be in the limelight. You don’t always see them in global university rankings, but we realised that they have very good learning programmes and they provide very good educational outcomes for their students, and they are very well known in their niche areas. 

The key differentiating factor in these universities is a very strong academic and industry linkage. If you ask any university, all of them will claim to have links with industries, but there is a difference between just sending your students on an internship and really having a strong industry linkage. There is a difference when you take this seriously and integrate industry learning into the academic curriculum. Industry attachment then is not just something you do on the side, but is integrated with the curriculum and with learning outcomes. In fact, the whole curriculum is designed with industry inputs, covering both theory and practice, and taught sometimes by professors with professional experience in their respective fields.

It is a different learning model from what traditional universities offer. And we believed that such a learning model could benefit our students, giving them valuable industry-relevant skills, and even an edge over the others when seeking employment after graduation. SIT was then already pioneering some elements of such a model. This was in 2012. We recommended then to make SIT a full-fledged university. Seven years later today, I am very glad to see that it is now our fifth autonomous university offering its own work-study degrees. As you have heard just now, SIT will soon have its own waterfront campus in Punggol, integrated with the Punggol Digital District.

SIT has come a long way in a very short time, and I am very confident that SIT will be able to make its mark as a leader in applied learning and exemplify the best of university-industry collaboration, and provide the best of applied learning for all its students. In that sense, SIT is a ground breaker, it is a path breaker. All of you, as SIT graduates, should uphold this ethos of your university to be trailblazers and path breakers, pioneering new ways for yourselves. Do not be afraid to chart your own course and forge your own path in life, just as your university too has forged a new path. 

Naturally, in life, you will find pressures from all sides – sometimes it is from your family, sometimes it is from friends, and sometimes it is from society at large – pressures to pursue a certain path in life. You go to a good university like SIT, you get a degree, you must work in a certain area and then your path will be set for life. You hear this all the time. Sometimes you feel like you have to conform because this is what everyone else is doing. And if you don’t, you will be left out. Young people even have a term for this – FOMO, fear of missing out. Because everyone is doing it, I had better do it too. But when it comes to the big decisions in life, you shouldn't be just blindly following what others are doing or telling you to do. By all means, do your research, talk to people, get good advice and listen to the advice. At the end of the day, you have to decide for yourself and trust your gut and your intuition that you are doing the right thing. When you do so, don’t be afraid to try something new, or something that’s challenging or risky. In fact, when you look at successful people everywhere in the world, their paths in life were not always so straightforward or predictable.

Recently, I read the story of Mr Phil Knight, the founder of Nike. He graduated from university in 1959, and he did journalism. He didn’t really know what he wanted to do in life at that time. He decided he didn’t want to be a reporter or journalist. After graduation, he joined the US Army for two years, just to do something and to decide his path in life. After that, he did an MBA, and after graduating from his MBA, he could have gone straight into work. He could have become an accountant, and in fact, that was what his father was, and he thought he could pursue the same path. But he decided to take some time off and didn’t rush into things. He travelled to Japan. Why Japan? Because during his MBA course, he did a project on sporting goods market in Japan. He thought he should go to Japan and study what the sports goods market there was like. He visited a shoe factory. It was a brand that I think we all don’t know, but it has a familiar name today – ASICS. This was in the 1960s. He was impressed with the shoe, and thought it was a good quality shoe. He negotiated with the Japanese company to be the exclusive importer for the shoes into the US. That’s how he started his first business as a shoe importer. Over time, and it was only 10 years later that he eventually designed and made his own branded shoes.

That’s often what life is like – it’s unpredictable. There are options you can choose, and along the way, you will evolve and discover new paths. Whatever path you choose, remember that it takes time, effort and hard work to get results. This goes against the grain because we live in an age of instant gratification. Everyone wants everything right now, right here. I am very familiar with this in the Government – whenever there is a problem, people look to me for instant solutions. All of us are guilty of this in our own ways. We demand instant replies to emails and WhatsApp messages. We become “instant experts” just because we have Googled something, and then we imagine that we know everything. We want immediate service wherever we go. In some ways, we are spoilt because the market now responds to all our demands. You want food? Just press a button and you get delivery. Advances in technologies means that everything good and better can be achieved at the touch of a button. 

Certainly, there are benefits to having faster and more convenient solutions. But I hope all our graduands here will not succumb easily to this “culture of instant” and to your own short-term impulses. Importantly, I hope your time in SIT has taught you that if you want to excel at anything, you have to take time, patience and effort to learn and master the skills. This requires determination and hard work, and it will not come instantly. In fact, the good things in life never come instantly. They don’t just fall on your laps. You have to work hard for it. Having the courage to forge your own path, and having the discipline and the tenacity to work hard and excel, these are the qualities that will help you go a long way in life.

And I am very happy that we are seeing these qualities in our SIT graduands. For example, one of them here today is 28-year-old Mr Shawn Chew who is graduating with a Master of Engineering Technology in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. After secondary school, Shawn continued his education in a polytechnic because he felt that he was more of a hands-on learner. He next went to university, and he made another big decision. He was then already a first-year student with another local university, but he decided to switch to SIT because he felt that SIT was offering him a better pathway – an applied learning pathway that was more suitable for him. After graduation, he joined Singapore Power as an engineer. He worked for a while and returned to SIT to pursue a Master’s degree. He is now mentoring new staff and young engineers in Singapore Power, and he hopes to be one of SIT’s industry mentors to give guidance to his juniors.

Another example is 27-year-old Mr Chiam Cheng Yang. He too made the switch from a more conventional Bachelor’s degree programme to a hands-on degree programme as he was attracted to SIT’s one-year Integrated Work Study Programme that’s built into the curriculum. He had his internship with a consultancy firm, which was part of the BCA scholarship, and he had the opportunity during his internship to integrate textbook learning with real-world knowledge. He did an interesting and innovative project using Building Information Modelling to do lightning risk assessment. He used 3D software to visualise and to simulate a lightning protection system for a hospital building. The work done was so impressive that the company is now in discussion with BCA to see if this solution can be commercialised.

Besides Shawn and Cheng Yang, this morning we have more than 130 engineering graduands. All of you will have the chance to make your mark and contribute to the building of our nation as engineers.

Remember what I said just now about the good things in life don’t just fall on our laps? This applies to us as individuals, and it applies to us as a nation too. We have all become accustomed to a certain quality of life in Singapore. Certainly, not everything is perfect, but there are many good things we enjoy – good housing, good jobs, good wages, and a decent standard of living. But what we have achieved today is not a natural order of things, certainly not for a small country like ours. It can all unravel and come apart very quickly. What we have today can only be sustained with real effort, discipline and a constant adaptation to change. That is why at the national level, we are not resting on our laurels. We are embarking on major plans to rebuild and remake our city for the coming decades and even for the next century. All of you would know that we are already working on major infrastructure projects like the Changi Airport Terminal 5 and a new mega port at Tuas. We are also developing new areas like the Greater Southern Waterfront, and the site at Paya Lebar Airbase after the airbase moves to Changi. We are trying new ways to build, not just to build more infrastructure, but developing and building in different ways to make our city greener, more liveable and more sustainable. To realise all these projects, we need good engineers. This is a good time to be an engineer. We need all of you to apply your skills and get involved in this national effort to remake our city and shape our future together. 

In conclusion, today is a significant milestone in the lives of all our graduands, but the road does not end here with your graduation. In fact, your journey in life has just begun. Throughout this journey, you are bound to face some bumps along the road. You will encounter life’s inevitable setbacks, but you have to continue to believe in yourself. You have to keep working hard, persevere and chase your dreams. Do not be afraid to forge your own path, even if what you are doing is new, ground breaking, challenging or even risky. If you do all of that, if you build on what you have already accomplished here, then I am very confident that all of you will be able to make your mark and reap the rewards. 

On that note, congratulations to all the graduands, and I wish you every success in your future endeavours. Thank you very much.