Daily Lessons from Life 28 October 2017 - IHL to "teach" industry skills?

"Institutes of higher learning to play larger role in upskilling workers

SINGAPORE: More than 400 bite-sized courses will be offered primarily by institutes of higher learning (IHLs) under a new initiative called the SkillsFuture Series, said Education Minister (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung on Saturday (Oct 28). 

The courses will cover eight emerging and important areas - such as cyber security, urban solutions and tech-enabled services - that are central to Singapore's future economy needs

Mr Ong was speaking at the launch of the Lifelong Learning Festival at the Devan Nair Institute for Employment and Employability."

It is an interesting twist. At one point the IHL, including the universities were questioned on how much do they know abt skills, knowledge n tools required by the specific industries since these stuffs changed so fast these days!

It would be better if the formal educational system focused in "teaching" lifelong skills like resilience, effective communication for creative individual n team problems solving, collaborative teamwork n sense of justice, fairness, compassion n grace up to secondary school level n put the kids into the workplace where their employers n their industries will provide up-to-date specific knowledge, skills n tools at work.

In this way we create a younger workforce with solid lifelong skills with a much shorter primary school to "market" formal education system (save on time n money required) while the employers n industries train them on ever changing stuffs for them to be productive always!!

No waste like now where after training an engineer fr primary school to university of 16 yrs, half or more of his/her university educated stuffs r useless for his/her job!!

Will our government goes there instead of this "burdensome" route that create some "business" for the IHLs!!

Q is: r these wasteful n unproductive?