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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Singapore
Index
The main goals of manpower training were to increase
the
average skill level of the labor force and, at the same
time,
provide sufficient numbers of workers with the specialized
skills
necessary to meet future industrial needs. Beginning in
the late
1970s, the government placed increased stress on education
in order
to achieve the objective of industrial restructuring. As
of 1987,
however, Singapore's work force was less educated than
that of some
of the countries with which it competed. Five percent of
the work
force had university educations compared with 19 percent
for the
United States and Japan and 6 percent for Taiwan. Some 11
percent
had received post-secondary schooling other than in
universities,
compared with 46 percent for Japan, 23 percent for Taiwan,
and 16
percent for the United States.
In the early 1980s, government studies showed that
about half
of the work force had primary-level education or less, and
many
older workers had low levels of English language skills.
To remedy
this situation, the Basic Education for Skills Training
(BEST)
program was introduced in 1984 to provide opportunities
for workers
who had not completed primary education to improve their
English
and math. By 1989 some 116,300 workers (half the target
group) had
had some BEST training. Time was also solving the problem
as
younger people received more education and the older,
less-educated
workers passed out of the work force; between 1979 and
1984,
entrants to the work force with only primary-level
education or
less declined from 43 percent to 26 percent. The
government needed,
however, to ensure that this better-educated work force
was trained
in the necessary skills to complete the transformation of
Singapore
from a labor-intensive economy to a high-technology
city-state--a
"technopolis."
A further problem in achieving this transition resulted
from
"government brain drain." Each year 50 to 60 percent of
new
university graduates were absorbed by the government,
including
government-owned companies and the statutory boards. A
system of
awarding undergraduate scholarships, which often tied the
awardees
to eight years of government service, assured that the
public
sector absorbed many of the top-ranking students. Some
critics
thought that this concentration of the country's valuable
human
resources in the public sector might be to the long-run
detriment
of entrepreneurial and private-sector development.
Data as of December 1989
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