Professor Su Guaning, President, Nanyang Technological University

Professor John Hennessy, President, Stanford University

Distinguished guests

Ladies and gentlemen

I am delighted to join all of you today for the signing of this MOU between Stanford and NTU. The media was so keen to carry this piece of news that it has already been known for more than a week that Stanford University would be the 10^th addition to EDB’s World Class University programme. Each new university setting up here is good for Singapore as it enhances our international network for educational and research collaboration.

We are honoured to be Stanford’s partner in Asia. Stanford’s Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate programme has a strong reputation. It has been ranked number one in the past three years by US News and World Report.

With ten world-class foreign universities partnering us here in Singapore from the US, Europe and China, we are unique in hosting such a diverse international community. Working with our local universities, these foreign universities help strengthen our foundation for a knowledge economy by fostering creativity, attracting talent and generating economic value. Our industries benefit from the expertise and the research work.

Of course, for these partnerships to be sustainable, the benefits must accrue to both sides. The foreign universities which partner us must also benefit from the relationship. Many are interested in Singapore because of the growing importance of Asia to them. We are a good connection for them into an Asia which will almost certainly become the most important economic region in the world some time later this century.

Asian middle classes are growing rapidly. They already number in the hundreds of millions. Because the state educational sectors are often under-funded, there is a growing demand for private higher educational services, only a tiny fraction of which can be met by individuals studying in the advanced countries. Most of the demand has to be met at home in Asia. It is an industry already worth tens of billions of dollars a year.

Singapore is becoming a key node for this higher education industry in Asia, the way we are already a node for trade, finance, air and sea transportation, and manufacturing. We are increasingly a node for the creation and exchange of knowledge and intellectual property. Stanford has decided to partner NTU because it sees Singapore as an important part of its Asian strategy.

Stanford brings to Singapore in this partnership its valuable expertise in Environmental Science and Engineering. For economic development to be sustainable anywhere in the world, environmental concerns must be properly addressed. This requires knowledge and resources. In Singapore we have always paid a lot of attention to the environment because of our compactness. But we cannot work on our own as the winds and the waves do not carry passports. We have every interest in fostering greater consciousness and understanding of environmental issues throughout Southeast Asia where rapid urbanization and economic development have led to the widespread destruction of forests and mangroves, and the pollution of rivers, lakes and seas.

The economics of environmental protection are important because considerable resources are needed. With proper rules in place, market solutions are often the best. The way to solve environmental problems is to incentivize the solutions. The Asian environmental engineering market alone (excluding Japan) is worth at least $37 billion a year and has the potential to triple to $105 billion by 2010.

This is an industry which Singapore would like to build up both for economic and for larger reasons. The Singapore-Stanford Programme will help to lay a good foundation for the industry and bring academic staff and industry players closer together. Such collaboration gives Singapore a competitive advantage. Stanford’s expertise in a wide range of technologies from water treatment to clean energy will be very useful for Singapore-based companies particularly for the development and test-bedding of new technologies. The Singapore-Stanford Programme will also train scientists and engineers for the industry not only in Singapore but also for the wider region.

Even before the first student has been enrolled, a number of industry players have already committed themselves to offering scholarships for the programme including CPG Consultants, PUB, the National Environment Agency, SUT Sakra, and Yokogawa. They also represent some of the future employers of the graduates.