Grades alone not enough: Ong Ye Kung

Undergraduates should develop soft skills for employability, says Ong

By Miranda Yeo, Charmaine Ng

In an exclusive interview with the Nanyang Chronicle, Acting Education Minister (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung encouraged students to take up internship programmes to increase their appeal to employers. PHOTO: KENJI KWOK

Good grades alone won’t guarantee success in the workplace.

In an exclusive interview with the Nanyang Chronicle, Acting Education Minister (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung reminded students that they should also start honing their “soft skills”.

“We can have a lot of knowledge, but we must have skills. Otherwise, we will be like an appliance with no socket to plug into,” Mr Ong said during his visit to NTU on 16 Mar.

He said that being a team player, as well as having skills in negotiation and intercultural communication, would increase one’s chances of getting employed.

“The best way to develop these skills is by doing. That is why internships become so important,” Mr Ong added.

The minister said that, in general, graduates in Singapore are well prepared for employment and have done well in the workforce, with starting salaries going up in the past few years.

Compared with other developed countries, where graduate unemployment and stagnating wages are a problem, Singapore is still “on a good run”.

Mr Ong also said that universities in the country are doing well.

He gave NTU as an example, which he said has done “fantastically well” on world rankings.

Universities in Singapore have also done well in terms of employment for fresh graduates and quality of teaching, he said, adding that university rankings matter to potential employers.

He said: “If you come from a good university with a good ranking, employers do look at you differently. It’s a premium that students will enjoy.”

But he said the challenge now is for local universities to use their research capabilities to find solutions to local issues.

“I think the next phase is research,” he said. “If we can translate (research) more into enterprise, into innovation that is an area we should shoot for.”

He cited the example of how Carnegie Mellon University helped its city, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, transform from a steel town to a place for entrepreneurs and startups to flourish.

“In universities, a key role is to develop the talent and our human resource. That is the basis of growth, job prosperity, and a better life,” said the minister.

Mr Ong took on the new portfolio last September and has since been visiting various tertiary institutions to meet with students and staff.

During his campus visit, Mr Ong met with NTU President Professor Bertil Andersson along with a group of student leaders.

While his counterpart, minister Ng Chee Meng, is in charge of preschools, primary and secondary schools, and junior colleges, Mr Ong is overseeing tertiary institutions as well as several skills training programmes.

One of these programmes is the SkillsFuture initiative, which provides each Singaporean aged 25 and above with $500 in credit to take up courses to continually upgrade themselves in more than 50 areas, such as languages, digital animation and finance.

SkillsFuture is not targeted solely at undergraduates, but Mr Ong hopes the initiative will encourage students to discover and pursue their passion — a key ingredient for success in their future careers.

“If you can go into an area you are inteested in, then you’ll be curious about it. When you’re curious about it, there is a good chance then that you will spend your entire career, your whole adulthood, learning about it.

“If you do that, then chances are, you will be a master in your field,” he added.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Nanyang Chronicle on April 4, 2016, with the headline ‘Grades alone not enough: Ong’. Print Edition