SIT lauded for excellent on-the-job training, learning methods

With its “practical approach” to learning and courses geared towards providing students with in-demand skills, the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) “epitomises” the qualities that will help the younger generation of today meet the challenges of the future, said Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Commending SIT during his address at a dialogue organised by the university yesterday, Mr Lee said SIT has offered students the chance to develop themselves through many different pathways, including those who had already entered the workforce, and those who had gone to the Institute of Technical Education and polytechnics.

SIT also trains students in skills which are in demand and will help them find good jobs, such as sustainable infrastructure engineering (land) and systems engineering, which are important as Singapore continues to build infrastructure, said Mr Lee, citing the rail network, Changi Airport and the Republic’s Smart Nation goals as examples.

SIT’s practical approach to learning also sees students placed in programmes like its Integrated Work Study Programme, where they undergo job stints to apply at the workplace what was learnt in class.

Already, the university — which became autonomous in 2014 — is seeing results. Mr Lee noted its graduate employment survey found that about 90 per cent of SIT students found jobs — full-time, part-time and temporary — within six months of graduation.

And more than 80 per cent of SIT’s accountancy students received priority job offers before graduation, after completing the Integrated Work Study Programme with different companies, he added.

The university’s new campus in Punggol will be well integrated with the surrounding industrial space and the public park, reiterated Mr Lee, citing start-up incubator Launchpad@Block 71 as a reference point.

Launchpad was so successful that it became part of NUS “organically”, and has created a buzz in the Ayer Rajah area. While this happened “more by accident rather than design”, this will be planned at the outset for SIT, he said.