SMU Provost and Lee Kong Chian Chair Professor of Social Sciences Lily Kong commented on Singapore’s push to become a smart nation and noted that this has led to speedier processing for bringing in new and relevant courses. Last year, SMU set up an interdisciplinary programme called ‘Smart-City Management and Technology’, involving computer scientists, social scientists and others.

“The government is leading this whole charge of becoming a smart nation. We wanted our students prepared for it and we had talked to prospective employers who endorsed it and the ministry put aside the timeline that they normally required of us and worked with us to make it happen much quicker – easily two-thirds of the time that ordinarily would have been needed to approve a programme,” said Prof Kong. She also shared that SMU’s school of law has just established an advisory board for law and technology. “The cutting-edge practitioners who are bringing that technology into law firms are on these advisory boards, talking to our law school about what needs to change in the curriculum and how our faculty need to be prepared for that,” Prof Kong told University World News on the sideline of the 6th ASEF Rectors’ Conference (ARC6).

Speaking at the ARC6 – organised by the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), in partnership with SMU, Jorgen Ostram Moller, Adjunct Professor at SMU and Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, said that little is known about the jobs of the future, especially with the advent of disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and Internet of everything. He also noted the need to prepare students for an uncertain future even as education and research are already “out of tune” with the demand for skills.