Two senior persons, a company director and a businessman, expressed a similar view. They are concerned that Singapore is now run by scholars who do not have experience about the business environment and try to solve the problems by writing papers.
The handling of the mini-bond crisis is an example. Although the initial response of the authority was appropriate, the subsequent events (especially after the Hong Kong settlement) needed a new response. But, the scholars were not able to handle this type of situation.
There were incidences of cheating in motor insurance claims. The situation is getting worse over the years. Reports made to the authority were not followed up or investigated, but were pushed aside. The insurance companies were asked to solve this problem, but they do not have the regulatory power.
Many foreign workers reported that they had to pay a large sum of money (USD 9,000) to get a permit to work in Singapore. There were a suspicion that a large part of this money goes to the pocket of the employer who held the work permits.
A minister was reported to have said that as the payment was made in a foreign country, it falls outside the jurisdiction of Singapore. Surely, an investigation can be done in Singapore to see if the employer had received some payments?
This lack of practical experience applies not only to the senior levels of the civil service, but higher up in the chain of command. We have to move away from writing papers to the real issues faced by the people in Singapore.
Tan Kin Lian
EXCELLENT piece.
ReplyDeleteIts past the stage of policy papers, discussions, feedback , implementation...
We need people who can get things done.
Unfortunately, most Singapore's scholars dont have the caliber to deal with the new kind of world we live in .
The "high achivers" in school are so concerned with the "scores" that they sweep all the "rubbishs" under the carpet.
ReplyDeleteThat is how they received high scores in schools. They only want to show the best, and tried to hide (or even misrepresent the not so good aspects) from person marking the scripts or marking the presentation.
They are prepared to do anything (include giving false impressions) to achieve high scores.
Is this healhty? Some times they may be acting like an ostrich by sweeping all "rubbishs" under the carpet.
U do this while in schools is ok, but if u apply it to the real life situations, it could be very wrong.
But what really matters is come election, there will be 50% walkovers, 66% mandate and 98% seats for the PAP.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing is, they thought they are the best and the smartest.
ReplyDeleteThey would never admit their mistake, and dislike people to point out their mistakes.
Like that how can??
Dear Mr Tan,
ReplyDeleteI fully concur and support what you are saying. The entire civil service including the military are led by paper leaders/commanders. For a fact, all our generals have not gone through any real action and basically were there through simulation studies. I am not implying that we need a war to promote our guys. But I am saying that in case of a war, I do not really trust that they can actually do the right things. As you see, these scholars although are outstanding performers in academic studies, they lack the street smart intelligence in dealing with situations. This is something which requires time and exposure in tough conditions to possess. Anyway, these guys have been too sheltered. I have never placed too much hope on them in leading the country well. They are but lions in the zoo. Very well fed and good to look at. In fact, I have met and spoke to several scholars myself. To be blunt, I find them to be awfully naive and stupid in certain aspects. I guess it is only in the civil service that they will survive and progress.
Anyway, thanks for bringing sure an issue for discussion.
I don't see any suggestion or new ideas for the system. How would you change it? Who should run the civil service if not civil servants, scholars or not?
ReplyDeletewelcome to singapore..get used to it..scholars nowadays aint like scholars in the past..just because they can vomit back the loads of info they read makes them eligible to be scholars..ever heard of educated idiots??practical situation needs both ideals and practical experience to be resolved. usually, ggod diplomacy is needed as well..something our local Uni grads/JCs lack greatly..common sense is no longer that common nowadays.
ReplyDeleteMr Tan, you are absolutely correct. It is very sad that Singapore has became a "paper" state after 44 years of nation building.
ReplyDeleteJohn
MR TAN
ReplyDeleteGravely apt. The report is an excellent observation. If we are not careful, we can write an excellent report on our demise too.
From Cashew Nut.
the problem with scholars running the country is that these scholars are out of touch with the reality of life, not so much in singapore but elsewhere. having grown up in such a sheltered environment such as singapore, they have never been expose to the true realities of doing business and survival in which ethical boundaries are blurred and nobody follows the law to the letter.
ReplyDeletesince singapore is such a globalized country, it'll inevitably have to interact with other countries in which the practical aspects of personal relationships and deal-making are vastly different. the presumption that most of these scholars make (ie. rule of the law, and how contracts are binding) are not always correct.
I agree with your comments. The scholars do not have an easy time when they start and they are hot housed with projects and papers to write. They are kept so busy that they probably forgot why the civil service is there in the first place - to serve the needs of SIngaporeans.
ReplyDeleteBy the time they have become successful and risen to the top levels, they bask in their success and have minions to do their many biddings, ignoring the realities of life in the heartlands. Having the high pay confirms their beliefs and cements the bond between the civil servants with the political masters. Hence the cycle perpetuates and this is where we are tight now.
Here is my reply to 12:52 AM who asked, "What is the suggestion for a new system?"
ReplyDeleteI will give my suggestion separately. But, it is quite typical of the current establishment to ask this question, and whatever suggestion is put forward is rejected as being impractical.
This is why things do not change in Singpore, unless it is created anew by the scholars.
I do not deny scholars are a brainy lot and we do need some of them in government (provided they want to be in the public sector). What they lack is commercial/field experience. What the government should do is to have them gain field exposure in junior positions (but be properly compensated) or understudy from a more experience staff (can be non-management personnel) manager before appointing them immediately to senior/management position upon graduation. The exposure will not only do good for themselves but also for Singapore. Correct me if I am wrong but this is the impression I have on government appointment of scholars.
ReplyDeleteThis "problem" is not merely contained to the civil service. I work in a major MNC and we have our fair share of "bright scholars" who have crossed over to the private sector at senior positions. My common observation of them (at least the ones we have hired), is that they have no interest in learning about the business. Their core skills seem to centre around "boss management" and KPI management. I pray this is not symptomatic of what is happening inside our civil service.
ReplyDeleteThe persons reading papers expect the ones writing have practical experiences.
ReplyDeleteNow even the ones writing also don't not know the real issues. So everythings are "on papers" only. "纸上谈兵".
Well, too bad Singapore.
ReplyDeleteWe ALL have to take some responsibility. At every election, we gave them a strong endorsement & mandate to continue as such.
Seismic changes on the political landscape has happened or happening in Taiwan, Japan, even Malaysia.......when is our turn ?
Our scholars are good and can only survive if the same favourable enviroment and culture are create for them to operate.
ReplyDeleteWhen the climate of the environment and culture change is different, I believe they will try to change the environment and influnce that culture to follow ours, which I believe is just like our leaders trying to sell Singapore as a model. If they could not do it, I believe they will fail ultimately in that system (others may not always accept the way we want it to be). A good case study is like Suzhou IP reverting back to the Chinese.
But unfortunately, in reality ; at best we can only be a "brand", whether others will like this brand or not is highly dependent on their perception and liking. This is the reality which is what is "practical".
Even the Japanese which is a much homogenous race is now finding it necessary to "change" to rid the political dominance in their country.
Systems exist to serve the people. I believe a "closed" system will die a natural death or entrophy. Social entropy is about the natural decay within a social system, especially if it is "closed" one. If leaders prefer to "close" it with their dominance, I believe it is not much different.
we may soon be like the taiwan government also run by scholars who perform badly in the typhoon aftermath
ReplyDeleteHi Mr. Tan,
ReplyDeleteI chanced upon your blog from my friend's link on Facebook. I have to say, although I am also saddened by how the situation has unfolded in Singapore, please let me give my two cents worth of opinion.
I am a university graduate as well. But I do not hold myself in as high regard as what has been suggested in some parts amongst the comments. Rather, I am very aware that if I were to succeed in life, there's much for me to learn. Yes, as an ex-university student, I did have tons of homework, papers, exams, projects and tests to clear. These are all but inevitable parts of being an undergraduate. We did not choose to be like that, but rather, it's what's in the system that requires us to go through all these.
Not saying that the system is totally bad, but in truth, it has its flaws. Many a times I had been so bogged down by these 'requirements' that I don't even have much time to read the papers, watch the news, much less keeping pace with reality. Sometimes, I lost touch too. But I can't help it. If I don't clear what's required of me, how am I supposed to graduate?
Over the years, I have grown as a person and become more and more aware of my own strengths and weaknesses. There are certain strengths which I pride myself with, but sadly under this current system, they cannot be fully utilized or expressed. Hence, I had to suppress them and go with what's available and required. In short, I don't have much leeway.
I do understand the concerns over the lack of real life experiences of graduates as a whole these days. But in truth, we have our difficulties as well. And we have been trying our best to make good of the situation we are in so that we can maximize the effects of our talents, under the current system.
Conclusively, I would just like to say that being a graduate isn't easy nowadays.
I like to highlight the danger of this statement "I don't see any suggestion or new ideals for the system"
ReplyDeleteIf you see something wrong, you are fully entitled to comment and raise the awareness, even if you do not have any solution at that point of time. For example, when you see a fire you should should "fire fire". Do you have any solution? Sometimes there is no obvious solution. When you shout, you heighten the danger. People around will react accordingly. Not all are in the same situation, although all are under fire alert. Some may have fire extinguisher, some can run with their passport, some just have to run without looking back.
Some people may feel that it is important to form a committe and write a paper, get the grammar correct .... Some may just save their skin by running while shouting "fire fire".
If you belong to the group of people who says "don't highlight problem if you have no solution", you are likely to keep quiet during a fire ....
CASEW NUT
Mr Tan,
ReplyDeleteThe problem isn't just a simple case of scholars running the system and screwing up. The problem is quite possibly a deep seated cultural one. That is, a reverence for scholarship success.
The inability to distinguish a person from his academic qualification. In other words, if someone holds a PhD spouting rubbish never mind the message was rubbish, the message will be credible. On the other hand if some who is develop skills outside the school system comes up with a brillant idea, no one believes him. That is the problem!
I mean how is it that the scholar class becomes so dorminant in the first place. That is because the business people (those that stay in Singapore) and the population at large let the scholars rule in the first place. Take Scandinavia for example, where academic achievement is only seen as a part of a person make up and NOT the only yardstick of a person's worth you don't get a situation where scholars rule the country.
Or in the US where politician/government fails, the business community take over to shore up society. Can the same be said about the non-glc business communities in Singapore?
You see the problem as you prescribe is really deep seated cultural one. Unless there is change in mindset in a substantial portion of the Singapore DNA, so to speak, the problem will not go away by replacing Scholars with another group of so call business savvy people. Hey if the business communities themselves (you not included) could not be asked to challenge the power of the scholars than who's job is it to make the change?
Hello REX comments as below,
ReplyDeleteLet us be fair, there are good Scholars and there are bad Scholars. Not all graduates are the same. An example of a good scholar is K. Jeyaratnam. And there are many more. Why, even Lee Kuan Yew, he was a good scholar and actually did wonderful things in times past (i am not talking about the recent years). There are also other examples where graduates mess up the whole system, especially true in our Education system.
In any organisation you have the same problem. TO promote a graduate with "brains" or a non-graduate with experience? As a matter of policy, it is "safer" to select the one with the paper qualification, it would have been wrong to reverse the policy completely, think of the consequences.
I do know of one huge company which took kindly to non-graduates. But in the end, there were many many problems, whilst the non-graduate "street smart" people were good in some ways, they are severely lacking in broadness of outlook, command of the language (it reflects on the company in the international environment) and depth of analytical skills.
HR management is not easy task. It is irresponsible in my opinion, for any person to make a general swipe at graduates holding high posts yet not doing anything substantial. You also hae non graduates holding high post and doing also nothing substantial.
In reality, the root of the problem is more so the POLITICAL CLIMATE of total submission and fear to do new things. It's not whether the person has a degree or not, let's be fair. There are good scholars who will do much more than non scholars just as the reverse is also true.
REX
Too much emphasis on paper qualities. I find experience the most important of all.
ReplyDeleteActually if they read enough of feedbacks and issues raised in internet forums, blogs and so on, there is enough of help on these "scholars" to know what went wrong and what step to be taken to coreect them, "fast and furious".
ReplyDeleteSome years ago, friend told me that "most times one can get all his answers from the feedbacks and suggestions they received.
In words, if they pay more attention on them and listen and understand them, and even find out ind out more from them or others, the solutions could have already been found, created and developed further, and the problems would have been solved.
I think the problem is that our hitherto economic model is not working now and suddenly we find that we are not that great anymore. The scholar mandarins were great in the past as we were in the stage of developing our economy, and their tasks were relatively easier and able to see success - urban planning, seeking foreign investment etc. Such skills require analytical skills and good language skills (to communicate with Western investors etc), and scholars are good at that.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately we are a developed economy now living in a world which is getting complex and other countries are catching with us (and some have even copied our models), so it is impossible now to be depend on gahmen, where in the past scholar mandarins could do a good job to solve our economic problems.
What's next? The growth has to come from businesses and individuals, not from Bureaucracy. Unfortuntely we have been moulded into letting the gahmen decide and so it is going to be a difficult transition.
From the gahman's perspective, history has shown that relishing power to the people will have some political repercussions, and I think some people might want to hold on to power as long as possible. So we see policies/projects such as FT, IR to get the hum going so as to avoid tackling the issues that must be tackled.
So what gives? I think 2 possibilites : the peaceful path of political alternatives (like the current Japan LDP is going to relish power to the Democratic Party, which is another spin off from LDP) or the violent path (People's power?). Either way, I think we are going to see some political changes, and I am not sure what are the political costs we ordinary pple need to bear for such changes.
Good scholars have the potential to do a lot of good for the country but the political climate may drive them to keep status quo or keep quiet to avoid being put under the spotlight. Even our PM himself often chose to keep quiet on so many issues when many of us expected him to say something or set some directions. You can see the BIG contrast compared to that of Obama, who is always spontaneous. I think it is okay to say sorry when you make a mistake instead of always trying to argue your way out.
ReplyDeleteIt is somewhat inaccurate to think of our scholar civil servants as inexperienced, out of touch ivory tower types. If you are in the Admin Service and manage to rise to senior level (e.g. DS), you do have to have a certain level of street smarts to survive the political manuvering and infighting in the Singapore Service. It is a myth that the Singapore Civil Service is this pristine, pure organisation where you can get ahead simply by plodding along digilently. If you are a plodder, you most likely end up in some dead end, mid level position.
ReplyDeleteTHe problem with our civil servants is that by paying themselves such ridiculous salaries, they set the expectations that they can deliver a level of service that is significantly better than what their poorer counterparts in China, India etc can deliver. The truth of the matter is that very often in terms of policy options, there is usually very little difference between what a Singapore civil servant can do and what his poorer counterpart in India or China can do.
This is however an unpleasant truth which cannot be openly admitted. This is because if it is admited, then it would shatter the myth that Singapore is special because of the Singapore Government. It would mean having to acknowledge that there is nothing very spectacular or special about what Singapore Government has "achieved".
If you want to prove this to yourself, all you need to do is some reading on the economic history of the past 20 years. If you did, you will find that there are in fact quite a few countries (many of them former communist countries) which have achieved a level of growth which is comparable to the "miracle growth" that is taught to our children as part of Singapore's history.
If this is true of our civil servants, what does that say about the arguement for the need to pay millions to our Ministers?
No need to worry as when the time come, it will happen naturally.... i.e. the government must change or the "people power" will change them.... American want Obama for a change, Japan want a change after 54 years in the hand of Liberal Democrats....and this happened in other countries like taiwan, malaysia, etc. so if our government still do not perform and yet still demand the highest paid from us... the people will just naturally "dump" them.
ReplyDeleteIn dealings with Senior Officers of key government agencies, one do get the feeling that many do not listen and think they know best. Some are even Director Generals of Agencies , which is sad reflection of things in the civil service, especially as many probably have no practical field experience of what is going on outside but rose through the ranks sitting in their ivory towers office 'pushing papers' or should one say doing research in the dark
ReplyDeleteLKY only believes in scholars & cacauscians. It is not going to be easy to change this perspective unless more candidates from the oppositions are voted in.
ReplyDeleteMuch have been said about scholars, more cons than pros. Scholars are the product of our education system. The very people who criticise scholars could be the same ones who try all means to get their children into the `Good' schools....... the schools whose success is measured by the number of straight A students produced.
ReplyDeleteOne should also look at the changes in our educational system. One important criteria in the selection of scholars, is the General Paper grade, as I was told. Has anyone here looked at the GP exam papers recently, or try to attempt it? Candidates who went by the restricted formula of answering the questions and writing the essays, do NOT get a good grade. On the other hand, candidates who showed thinking skills, broached alternative and novel thoughts were the ones scoring A.
Many who wrote here are also products of the ever changing and developing education system. Unfortunately, eventhough we have all gone through the journey, and now wiser, we tend to thumb down the young intellects who are still travelling their journeys.
Is it fair to expect them to know everything, which we ourselves took a very long time to know and understand? If we do not select the best brains to shorten the learning curves, who do we select? How do we select the best brains? Do we not have the best experienced and knowledgeable people on the board of selection for the various scholarships here?
DPJ won a landslide victory by advocating change and people-oriented policy.
ReplyDeleteThey know too much business-oriented is no good.
After such result is out, will sg change and be more people-oriented, and consider following HK's lead in giving the people better compensattions (i.e. more people-oriented)???
The problem is there's not enough competition to run these scholars out of jobs. Hence they can literally do whatever they want.
ReplyDeleteI use the quote from an above post below, that is the crux of the matter.... it is so simple... This is the problem with our government... they JUST are unable to say we have made a mistake.. and then move on... this is what pisses me off... we are all humans... Even MM... errors do occur over and over again... STOP trying to explain your way out... I DO HOPE someone from the PM's office is reading this post to let him know!
ReplyDelete----------------------------
"Obama, who is always spontaneous. I think it is okay to say sorry when you make a mistake instead of always trying to argue your way out.
August 30, 2009 6:05 PM "
Mr TKL,
ReplyDeleteOne of the most straight forward blog entry and right to the point. Great piece!