How relevant is international experience?

‘Mr Chan said companies which set up headquarters in Singapore look for people who know the regional market in Southeast Asia and can connect with the international market as well.

"They need teams of people who have the global and regional perspective. They don't care whether it's a Singaporean or non-Singaporean, that's the blunt truth, they only care about whether their team has the global perspective," noted Mr Chan, secretary-general of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC).’

The above is quoted from an ST article dated 27 Jul 15.

I think this is a practical advice, go for your overseas exposure to earn that spur to compete with foreigners in Singapore. Without the international exposure, you don’t stand a chance against the 3^rd World villagers that came here to work and claimed Singapore as an international experience. To these villagers, Singapore  is big city and they can go around flashing their working experience here. Does working in Singapore for Singaporeans mean anything? Or does an American or British who had worked in New York or London meant so much difference from Singaporeans working in Singapore? Would someone from Mumbai, Manila or Shanghai coming to Singapore be more advantageous because they already got experience in their home countries but no experience here?

What if a Singaporean is working in a local firm or MNC whose business is local, in Singapore, like a ‘chai tow kuey’ company or kopitiam? What about local banks/businesses when the operation is all local with local clients? Do they need international experience like working in London and New York? Must a Singaporean seeking a job in a local bank whose business is here needs to compete with a foreigner, like a New Yorker or Londoner, and lost out because they had worked in the two big cities and coming to work in a local bank here, whose business is here? Would he also lose out to someone from Mumbai, Manila or Shanghai? Is local knowledge and experience more important for working here?

I am just asking questions about this very important criterion called international experience as a badge of honour and a rite of passage. A MNC operating here, doing business here, would it be more advantages for the organisation to employ Singaporeans with local knowledge? What is the relevance of working experience in New York and London, when the businesses and customers are Singapore and Singaporeans? What is the advantage if he comes from Mumbai, Manila or Shanghai?

Actually I dunno the answer. I only hear people said got international experience must be good.  Do we need our politicians to work in London and New York or for that matter in Jakarta or Medan to make him a better politician? At one time everyone said must have a MBA then good. Does an organisation need to hire an MBA to run his ‘chai tow kuey’ or kopitiam store?

Please enlighten me? If international experience is that important, we better recruit our politicians from New York and London.

By the way, when all the talents are coming here to make their fortunes, why are we telling our PMEs to go overseas to make their rupees and rupiahs? And why are we issuing so many employment agency licenses to foreigners to bring in foreigners to work here and putting our Singaporeans at their mercy? Our country, jobs in our country, Singaporeans need to beg foreigners running recruiting agencies for job placements and allowing foreigners to tell the Singaporeans that they preferred to bring in foreigners, because foreigners best and Singaporeans no skill sets?

The Mathematician won – recomputation

My earlier two articles, ‘The Mathematician won’ and ‘What could the results be’, were based on the assumption that there were 300,000 new citizens. The official figure was 110,000 ie 2.46m less 2.35m eligible voters. Given the low birth rate, death and emigration, the net growth from the local population is near to zero, thus the 110,000 increase is likely to come from new citizens. My earlier assumption of 300,000 was thus wrong and the figure to use is 110,000 or about 1/3. The variable positions or findings thus would have to be adjusted accordingly. I also assumed that overseas Singaporeans were not allowed to vote thus raising the query whether the 2.46m eligible voters included or excluded them. I have found out that overseas Singaporeans did vote and thus were included in the 2.46m eligible voters. According to the media only 3,415 voted out of 4,868 eligible overseas Singaporeans. The number of overseas Singaporeans is 212,000.

Let me put the figures together again to clear up the confusion. When the assumptions were wrong, the result, though logical will be wrong. The conclusion would thus be different proportionally. Similarly, conclusions were based on the given data and how reliable the data would affect the end results.

Official facts

2.46m eligible voters and 93.56% cast their votes. Total voted was 2.304m.

PAP received 69.9% of the votes cast or 1.610m (Reported was 1.576m)

Opposition would receive 30.1% or 691,000 votes.

The 110,000 additional voters/new citizens were an equivalent of 4.5% of 2.46m

Applying this 4.5% change into the 60:40 equation, if 4.5% went to the 60 side, the impact would be 64.5/104.5 to 40/104.5 or 62% to 38%, ie a 2% shift on each side or a net 4% shift. If the 4.5% was added on the 40% side the new position would be 57.5% to 42.5%.

As my two articles were based on a single factor analysis, to get a 10% swing, the other factors must come into play. The 110,000 new citizen factor contributed to a 4% swing and the other factors, PGP, subsidies, stipends, Medishield Life etc would add the balance 6% to make the 10% swing in my previous articles.

A blogger raised the issue of an unaccounted 240,000 votes using the loss of 120,000 votes by the opposition and the gain of 360,000 votes by the PAP from 2011 to 2015.  This can be explained by the 2.304m votes cast. If the share of votes were to be 60:40, PAP should get 1.382m and oppo would get 922k votes. The actual votes of PAP were 1.576 and oppo 680k. The difference was what oppo should get ie 922k less 680k or 242K.  Oppo thus lost 100k plus the percentage increase in eligible votes. That would make up the missing 240k for the 360,000 gained by PAP. The numbers are not exact due to some mulitiplication margins.

In summary, only 4% shift was due to new citizens based on the statistics available and 6% due to other factors. The PAP’s winning percentage should go down by 4% while the oppo’s percentage should go up by 4% point when the new citizen factor was in play.  I hope this would help to make the picture clearer.

PS. We are taking the official data on population at face value in this discussion, as the truth. There is also a cumulative effect of new citizens that will continue to think like new citizens for some years to come. There will be exceptions when new citizens will think like the true blue Singaporeans and could emphatise with us and knowing that we share the same fate and destiny.

NUS and NTU better than Yale and Cornell Universities

According to the latest Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, NUS and NTU ranked above Yale, Cornell, Johns Hopkins and King’s College of London. NUS is not only the top university in Asia but ranked 12^th in the world.  NTU is ranked 13^th.  What a great achievement! Beida, Xinhua, Tokyo, Waseda, Hongkong, move aside. We have the best universities in the whole world. There is no need to go to the US or UK to get quality education. No need to waste money going to lowly ranked universities in Australia and the rest of the world.  That is, if you believe the ranking equates to quality of universities and quality of its output, ie students.

The criteria for the rankings are academic and employer reputations, student to faculty ratio, citations per faculty, international faculty ratio and international student ratio and also research excellence. How would these criteria affect or benefit the students? Academic and employer reputations, presumably the graduates are highly sough after by employers. Is that so? We only know that our junks did not have the right skill sets and are often rejected by employers that preferred to hire from the 3^rd World unranked universities. Fake degrees and degree mills also better, or can do.

Student to faculty ratio, presumably a smaller ratio would mean closer and personal attention on the students and can be translated to better grades. Enrol Ah Meng and check if better student to faculty ratio would make Ah Meng smarter. Citations per faculty and research excellence would mean better academics and thus benefit the students and their quality. Use the Ah Meng to confirm if this is also true. International faculty ratio and international student ratio, both imply that with more foreign faces, the universities are better. So just pump in more 3^rd world lecturers and students also can. How would these improve the quality of the graduates, more international friends, can relate and socialize with foreigners better, easier to integrate with them? EQ is important, what about grades?

What the rankings said is that we are world best. When we were not world best, we need to borrow international names, pay them, bring the whole faculties here, to say we have world best universities. Now we can do the reverse, the universities of the world would want to have joint campuses with us, bring our whole faculties to their countries and pay them good rupiahs, rupees and renminbis. Maybe can get Japanese Yen also.  There will be many joint campuses in other countries with the NUS/NTU brand and our lecturers would be in demand. We can send all our foreign lecturers to these countries and hire more foreign lecturers to replace them. What about Singaporean lecturers? What is that?

My recommendation, there is no need to send our students to the universities. The employers would still not hire them. Maybe in 30 years time. So a better recommendation would be to send them to the unranked universities in the 3^rd World. That is where the employers find all their good employees. Not in our world class top universities.

Why so funny? Paying for such good reputation but no market value, no demand. If the high rankings would lead to a situation where the employers are queuing up to snatch all the graduates from our top universities then it would make sense. To be real, to be able to get employed, it is better to go to universities in the 3^rd World and sign up with employment agencies from the 3^rd World given a licence to operate here. They are the game changer. They will get the applicants the right jobs, not the piece of paper from our top universities. They still cannot produce the right graduates with the right skill sets for the job market.

Maybe the Quacquarelli Symonds System may want to add a new criteria, the universities must produce graduates with the right skill sets for the job market. If their graduates are not wanted by the employers, did not have the right skill sets, give them a big F.

What do you think? Are we wasting public money for the wrong things, for a superficial branding without substance?

PS. Watch MIT, Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, we are going to over take you. We will bring in more foreign faculty staff and foreign students to improve our rankings further. And watch out students, the fees will increase with the improvement in quality, I mean rankings.

What does the result of GE2015 say?

I wrote an article before the GE with these paragraphs below and asked several questions. I have now added the answers to the questions I posed now that the Singaporeans have given a bigger mandate to the PAP. The Singaporeans have voted and spoken, these are what they want going forward.

‘Singaporeans must take a step back and think very seriously about this GE. It is a life or death situation for Singaporeans. This is the time to determine the future you want for yourself and your children. It is no joking matter and not something that can be left to fate or to fools. If Singaporeans think that we have a good govt in charge and the direction the govt is taking the people forward is the right path, vote for the govt.

If there is doubt, if you are not happy with what you are seeing, not happy with the direction you are moving, it is time to reclaim your country. You cannot afford to wait anymore. Going forward can be the end of the good life for many Singaporeans.’

 
Can we continue to pay the ministers and the elite in the millions? YES

Can we afford to keep adding foreigners at such a rate to this little piece of rock? Are you happy with 5.5m, 6.9m or 10m people in this island? YES, YES

Do you want to pay outrageous money for a small little flat for 99 years as your prize possession in life? YES

Do you want to be a minority in your own country? YES

Do you want to have a say about the future of your country, to shape your country or to allow a few individuals to do as they pleased? NO

Do you want to save for a life time only for your savings to be locked up or to be forced to pay for insurance that you cannot say no to?  YES

Do you want the country’s reserves or surpluses to make your life better or to make the life better for foreigners?  To make life better for foreigners

Do you want to let the govt decide what you can read, see and say? YES

Do you want the govt to plan your life, your savings, from cradle to grave? YES

Do you want a one party govt? YES

I am sure the govt has heard the Singaporeans loud and clear and will go forward to do what it thinks best. No need to be deaf frogs anymore. The Singaporeans have given the govt a blank cheque to do what it thinks best for the Singaporeans or at least 70% of the Singaporeans said so. The future of Singaporeans is safe and sound and they can look forward to celebrate SG100 under the PAP.

Or we have just witnessed the insanity of a people at its peak?

PMET situation top priority to Swee Say

Swee Say is looking at the PMET problems quite seriously. Credit must go to him for as much as I know, no minister had dug hard enough on this matter. Swee Say is looking at different angles, concentration of foreigners by location ie enclaves, company, industry and department. If he is serious, hope this is not just election talk, things will be moving for the good of Singaporean PMETs. Don’t ask me how the situation can get to this sorry state of affair.

The strange thing that he said is that there is a ‘need to speed up the transfer of knowledge and expertise from foreign PMEs to Singaporeans so that local workers will be able to drive the economy in the future’.  I can believe that in some top level jobs in some industries there will be a need for such transfer to knowledge and expertise. But at mid level, what is there to transfer or how much to transfer when most of these foreigners are new or fresh graduates, new to the jobs. In many cases they are here to learn on the job and Singaporeans are the ones doing the transfer.

There is a false assumption that the transfer is always from foreigners. Is that true? How many of the foreigners really have the expertise and knowledge that Singaporeans from world best universities did not have? And doesn’t anyone know that many of the foreigners came from 3^rd World villages, with fake degrees or from degree mills, you mean Singaporeans are so daft that need them to transfer their knowledge and skills to them?

Let me see, what kind of skill sets that these half baked foreigners have to transfer? Cheating, how to get fake degrees, how to gang together to cheat Singaporeans, or how to beat up Singaporeans for fun?

Sorry for the digression. Let’s hope Swee Say will do a good job and report some of his achievements in the media, where are the concentration or enclaves of foreigners, which industries, companies and departments where there is no Singaporean core. He needs to know these first before he can set up to clean them up. Hope the main media would report on them, the before or now and then, to let the people know that something real has been done. The results will tell if Swee Say and his MOM are real in what they said they are doing. Sekali like the Jobs Bank, no data leh, cannot tell leh. Or like some minister said, it is not good for the people to know. Then how?

The GE is over, and the Singaporeans have given the PAP a bigger mandate to look after their interest. Would the PAP forget this and turn against the Singaporeans and continue with its pro foreigner policies and leave the Singaporeans in the lurch? The PAP has another 5 years to prove that it is pro Singaporeans. Or it may take the big mandate as Singaporeans telling the PAP to do what it thinks best, like before, with more zeal?