14 January 2020
In 2018, when the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) surveyed 15-year-olds around the world on their degree aspirations, Singapore had the highest proportion of students wanting to go to university for higher education.
The Paris-based think-tank’s education and skills chief Andreas Schleicher says that the aspirations of young Singaporeans are understandable. But Mr Schleicher also says employers here do not necessarily recognise and pay for better skills. Additionally, he cautions that just because someone has a degree, it does not mean he or she is highly skilled.
Singapore, he said, should not only aim to raise the level of skills among its population, but also look at how to use its skilled and talented workforce better.
He says: “The single most important finding from our analysis is, in fact, that the knowledge economy no longer pays you for what you know. Google knows everything these days. The knowledge economy pays you for what you can do with what you know. Success is no longer about reproducing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying that knowledge to novel situations.”