Transnational Higher Education in Singapore - Relevance and Sustainability: Can transnational education programmes in partnership with Private Education Institutions continue to be relevant and sustainable in Singapore with the government's drive with SkillsFuture Initiatives?

Abstract

Globalisation and the advancement of information technology in the 21st century has resulted in the growing worldwide trend of higher education internationalisation and mobility. Coupled with rapid socio-economic changes and technological advances, two mega-trends – massification and mobility – have greatly influenced the higher education landscape.
The inclusion of education as a tradable service under the WTO’s GATS treaty in 1995 has ‘dislodged’ education from its traditional public good position to be a quasi-public good negotiated within a typical market structure. Students are treated as “customers” and the programmes are “products or goods”. The global expansion of this tradable service has led to an increasing trend of mobility of students, faculties, programmes and institutions. Transnational education (TNE) has contributed a significant proportion of the international education expansion and growth.
The objective of this study is to evaluate the status and sustainability of TNE in Singapore, in the context of the focus on mastery of skills against traditionally degree-based qualifications under the SkillsFuture Initiatives Framework launched by the Singapore government. The study researched on demographic data, facts and statistics and government discourse on university degree. TNE stakeholders, such as overseas university partners, students, graduates and teaching faculties were surveyed and interviewed to draw insights. The findings could be summarised as follows: as Singapore pushes towards a globalised and knowledge-based economy, there is continued appetite for higher education to stay competitive through the acquisition of new skillsets. With the cohort participation rate set at 40% for local public universities with no plans to increase this further, access to TNE as an alternative will cater to the needs of the remaining cohort as well as adult learners who need to upgrade themselves to stay relevant and competitive in the rapidly changing economic environments.