Singapore’s SITLearn puts skills assessment before training

For adults and employers in Singapore, the Singapore Institute of Technology’s new SIT School of Lifelong Learning and Career Development, known as SITLearn, promises one route instead of several disconnected ones: your skills are assessed first, training follows from that assessment, career development is built in, and applied research on the workforce feeds back into the whole system. That integrated model, linking assessment, continuing education, careers, industry partnerships and research, is how the university itself describes the school, according to The Business Times.

Why SIT decided running courses was not enough

Bernard Nee, SIT’s deputy president for industry and community and the dean of SITLearn, is candid about the starting point. In his account, most continuing education providers in Singapore, SIT among them until now, limited themselves to delivering programmes and work-study degrees. The new school is meant to break that habit.

“Looking at the changing landscape and the shortening lifespan of skills, we think that that is insufficient, which is why we have set up the CET (continuing education and training) school,”

Bernard Nee, deputy president (industry and community) of SIT and dean of SITLearn

Assessment sits at the front of the model for a practical reason. Some abilities come with a certificate; many others are picked up at work and leave no paper trail. “So skills assessment makes (these) skills visible,” Nee said. SITLearn builds its assessment tools and frameworks together with companies and public agencies.

Physically, nothing waits on new buildings. Training already takes place in SIT facilities or at clients’ sites, while a purpose-built hub is under development at the Punggol campus.

Two pathways, one for people and one for employers

The school splits its offer by audience. An individual gets a personalised journey that begins with discovering what they can already do and ends with career progression; this support also reaches adult learners in selected longer-form CET programmes. A company follows a parallel track, starting with a diagnosis of its workforce, moving to capability building and ending with measurable impact.

Employers are not only clients. Under the Corporate Adjunct Professorship Scheme, SITLearn works with firms to pick staff who can mentor and coach learners while keeping their industry jobs, so classes are taught by a mix of professors and practitioners. Sectors already involved in AI-readiness and capability projects include hospitality, healthcare and social services.

Course formats and what they cost

Programmes are designed around emerging market needs and come in several shapes. The newest ones tackle AI capability, governance and responsible adoption, digital infrastructure for green data centres, and the management of risks tied to the energy transition. Fees depend on the type of course, its length and how specialised it is.

Those prices are list figures quoted by SIT; what a learner actually pays depends on the subsidies they qualify for, so the numbers are a ceiling rather than a final bill.

Measuring whether online courses work

At the same ceremony, Josephine Teo, Minister for Digital Development and Information, gave graduands three pieces of advice: build what works, keep learning how to work alongside AI by becoming “AI bilingual”, and lean on human judgment. On the first point she was direct: “As AI enters more industries and physical systems, it will become even more important that you have in-depth knowledge and the ability to apply it to unexpected situations.”

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