NUS to allow students to stay ‘enrolled for 20 years’ to promote lifelong learning

SINGAPORE — Undergraduates at the National University of Singapore (NUS) typically spend three to four years before they get a bachelor’s degree. On Monday (March 5), the university said that it is “making its student enrolment valid for 20 years, from the point of undergraduate admission”, under a new alumni programme aimed at making “lifelong learning seamless” even after they graduate.

This is part of the push among universities and other higher learning institutes to play a bigger role in continuing education for adults.

By opening its doors to students for a longer time, NUS said that it will also give them “ready access to skills-based, industry-relevant courses necessary for upskilling or reskilling, to remain competitive in the job market”.

Under this new NUS Lifelong Learners programme, which will launch in August, all of the university’s 288,600 alumni will automatically qualify for the first roll-out of about 500 courses, which is five times more than the offerings under its present alumni programme.

The programme will also bring together its continuing education and training (CET) courses as well as those from the SkillsFuture series such as data analytics and finance which were launched last October.

Some of the certifications for the courses offered may be consolidated to enable students to obtain graduate diplomas as well as bachelor’s or master’s degrees.

To encourage its alumni to take up the courses, NUS will offer virtual vouchers to offset the cost of one CET course. Applications for the first schedule of courses will open on July 1, and classes are slated to start a month later.

This programme will build upon and replace the present alumni programme called the Lifelong Learning Initiative for NUS Alumni, which was piloted last year. There were 8,000 applications received for 404 places offered for the pilot’s 79 courses that began last August. After the overwhelming response, more courses and places were added. At the start of this year’s semester, about 1,200 alumni were enrolled in 88 courses.

This initiative will last until July 2020. After that, students who are already part of it may continue with their courses under the new NUS Lifelong Learners programme.

Touching on the importance of lifelong learning at the Education Ministry’s Committee of Supply debate on Monday, Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung noted that NUS’ latest programme “will help their students build their careers and learn for life through this period’”.

“This gives new meaning to the word ‘alumni’. I am sure this change in mindset will spread to all institutes of higher learning,” he added.