SINGAPORE: “By the time you graduate, everything you will have learnt will already be obsolete.” said the CFO of a major global bank to the audience of University students at a career workshop I was hosting.

“So what’s the point of school?” whispered one of the students to another, both shaking their heads in commiseration.

Welcome to the huge elephant in the room of higher education. No one quite knows what skills will be relevant for us in the future. Not the students, not even the employer and certainly not the grey-haired academics nominally in charge of preparing your daughter or son to face the age of disruption.

The most dangerous notions about education, in my opinion, come from the people who have the most influence over the future of our youth and the least idea about how to guide their children. Yes, parents, I’m looking at you.

Over the years, in my previous life as a director of a university career centre, I have heard hundreds of stories from the frontline where my team of more than 20 career coaches counselled students who were burned out, run down or plain old disillusioned with life.

Mental health conditions like depression and anxiety were rising rapidly. More often than not, the root cause was them doing a course because of parental expectations rather than pursuing their own interests.

My clinical psychologist partner Greg too hears similar stories from clients further down the line in their careers, who may seem successful on the outside, but feel like they’re struggling with old emotional baggage and in finding meaning from life and work.

This left me convinced of the urgent need for us parents to update our attitudes and mindsets, and reimagine how we steward our youth into this brave new future.

In particular, I want to highlight some common unintentional mistakes I’ve seen parents make which sabotage their child’s chances of finding joy and meaning from their higher education and work life.

MISTAKE #1: THINKING STEM SUBJECTS ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE HUMANITIES

Data suggests that demand will continue to rise for jobs in the science and tech sector. But did you know many employers in tech and life sciences sectors are more interested in hiring students from the humanities disciplines?

READ: Commentary: Humanities at the heart of a holistic education in a tech-driven world

One surprising trend I’ve seen over the past few years is traditional STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) companies trying to diversify their talent and hire more non-STEM graduates. For example, bio-pharma companies who are trying to hire anthropologists and social science students to help them pivot their business focus into wellness, and tech titans trying to hire liberal arts students to boost their innovation capacities.

As a senior engineer from a leading tech firm said to me: “If I hire 100 computing science students in Singapore, I normally get just one answer to a problem. They’re trained to see the problem in the same way. But if I hire 10 humanities students, I get 10 whole new perspectives.

Diana Britt, APAC & Japan Head of Google Cloud Search, says: “Most people think of Google and believe it’s all about engineering. Yet our capacity to be a leader and innovate is based on “diversity of thought” merging the best engineers with the best creative thinkers to come up with the “best decision”.

Futurists also agree that the most valuable skills of the future are linked to humanistic, social emotional competencies machines find hard to replicate and that students need to expose themselves to a broad array of generalist experiences rather than devote themselves to a single deep area of expertise that risk being disrupted.

READ: Commentary: Do not fear retrenchment. Four tips for working professionals in a downturn

READ: Commentary: The generalist-specialist job distinction is holding many back

There has never been a more crucial time for our students to invest deliberately in cultivating their soft skills like empathy, creativity and self-awareness, and for parents and educators to place as much importance on them as learning math or science.

MISTAKE #2: BEING FIXATED ON GETTING YOUR CHILD INTO A PRESTIGIOUS UNIVERSITY

The truth behind why people pay so much for a university degree is because in the past, that piece of paper signalled to employers, friends and family: “Look at me, I am smart and diligent.”

In the past, when university degrees were rarer, they did a more efficient job in allowing employers to identify talent.

Nowadays, half of Singapore has a university degree. The piece of paper doesn’t do much to separate your child from thousands of others with the same piece of paper.

We are already seeing trends of employers like Apple, IBM and Google scrapping college degree requirements and CEOs such as IBM’s Ginni Rometty saying that vocational training and on-the-job experience is more relevant for tech sector than traditional four-year college degrees.

Employers may still use degrees as one of the ways for them to identify talent, but in today’s hyper-competitive jobs landscape, employers don’t just want to know where you went for your education, but more importantly, what life skills and competencies you have learnt. How you can tell a compelling story of how your unique experience will make you an effective team player for them.

Even within the same university, students will end up with very different experiences depending on who their educators are.

The trick here is to advise your child to research what specific courses they are interested in, look up their potential educator’s body of work, and even speak to recently graduated alumni to garner feedback on their experience, rather than blindly trust the institution’s brand name.

Also, don’t limit your thinking to universities but think further upstream. With society’s chase after an Integrated Programme, the reality is a polytechnic education can be a desirable feeder system into university or work life but is often overlooked.

READ: Commentary: Junior college or polytechnic after O-Levels – does it matter?

READ: Commentary: The rise of the digital economy – and how education may be transformed

Polys tend to work very closely with employers to devise highly practical curricula and training that maps on to industry needs. The poly education also exposes students early to real-life work through internships and applied learning.

Polys also tend to have less historical baggage – and do not have to deal with the influence of tenured professors on the deanery, so they can be more agile with changing up their approach and course offerings to suit market needs.

Poly students are also increasingly being seen by employers as more entrepreneurial and resilient, whereas we see more “grade-focused” students in universities coming from the junior colleges who tend to have a harder time accepting failure and setbacks, and are used to external validation for their scores and accomplishments.

MISTAKE #3: VALUING A HIGH STARTING SALARY OVER ENTREPRENEURIAL EXPERIENCE

During University Open Day, I used to be bemused by parents whose first question was about the average starting salary of the various courses we offered.

If you headed over to certain faculties, you could hear a chorus of parents yelling: “Pai Tan!”(hard to earn in Hokkien) while steering their kids by the shoulders away.

Commentary: Look beyond state-of-the-art campuses for what matters in education

The problem is, starting salaries are highly meaningless metrics, and no predictor of continued long term success. Many design students start off with low salaries and then come back to visit us as millionaires after starting their own companies. The most successful individuals, who are heralded as role models, chose starting their own company over a stable entry wage.

“Every year I stand on stage accepting donations from our ‘C’ students so that the ‘A’ students can do their research” laughed a University president I spoke to at a donor gala. It’s a well-known joke in university circles that ironically, our biggest donors are the self-made entrepreneurs who never cared much about grades in the first place.

In this age of disruption, we actually need more entrepreneurial mindsets and less focus on grades, plus a skills-focused approach to education.

For continued career success, even if you don’t intend to be a business person, I firmly believe that every single person needs an entrepreneurial mindset. 

Even for university academics, the ones who succeed and obtain funding are those who know how to sell their ideas and evaluate risks and opportunities like an entrepreneur.

READ: Commentary: The future just got brighter for aspiring Singapore tech entrepreneurs

READ: Commentary: The future is tech but where is Singapore’s engineering and IT talent?

The same goes for doctors, lawyers and any other profession you can think of. The world of the future is one where everyone needs to be their own best advocate, marketer, influencer and understand how to utilise the power of a network.

Hence, I would encourage students to devote time to developing entrepreneurial mindsets and trying out projects or developing “side hustles”, whether they are graded or not.

This is an area where polytechnics have an edge – their project-based pedagogy requires students to develop people skills early – negotiation, influencing, communicating – all in high demand in the future, as AI and automation take over workplace tasks that don’t require emotional intelligence.

MISTAKE #4: THE ‘COMPARE AND DESPAIR’ SYNDROME

Almost every parent knows that their child is special and incomparable. Yet, most of us fall into the trap of comparing our child to other people’s or even to our other children.

What works for your child depends very much on their personality, strengths and weaknesses. Also, some children are later bloomers than others. Like the old saying goes: “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.”

READ: Commentary: We have totally undervalued late bloomers

READ: Commentary: Over-parenting teaches children to be entitled. Let them fail instead

Comparisons are psychologically toxic and damaging for self-esteem. And what often happens, is that children end up chasing their parents’ affection and pride rather than rebelling or asserting their needs.

A 2007 study conducted by the Institute of Mental Health concluded that Singaporean children have higher rates of internalising problems compared to their Western counterparts, and that cultural factors greatly influence children’s manifestations of emotional problems. 

Researchers hypothesised that this could be because aggression is discouraged in Asian countries, while self-control, emotional restraint and social inhibition are encouraged.

Palliative care expert Bronnie Ware says that the one of the most common regrets of the dying are “I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

In leadership camps with more than 100 participants, we did a repeated questioning exercise where participants were asked over and over again “What do you really want?”

During the first few minutes of repeated questioning, participants gave responses like “I want money” or “I want a holiday”, but after participants were asked to dig deeper, almost half the room ended up saying something incredibly surprising – some version of “I just want my Dad/Mom to be proud of me”.

READ: Commentary: Why aren’t there more Singaporean CEOs?

READ: Commentary: Give workers permission to disrupt – one way Singapore businesses can accelerate digital transformation

This is a prime example of extrinsic motivation – doing something because of some external reward, including pleasing others. Yet research has shown that extrinsic motivations are not just ineffective, but also often demotivating, while intrinsic motivation taps into people’s desire to do things because they themselves find that thing interesting or meaningful.

What the world of work needs more of is people who are intrinsically motivated and self-driven, and less people focused on delivering what they think others want to hear.

MISTAKE #5: KEEPING UP THE FAÇADE OF THE PERFECT PARENT-HUMAN

The world is full of challenges. Our youth need to understand that setbacks are normal and how to navigate them skillfully.

It’s impossible to be perfect or be right all the time, yet I cannot tell you the number of youth who see their parents as infallible or never having done anything wrong, and hold themselves to impossible ideals.

Parents can help their kids be more resilient by sharing stories of small challenges that they are experiencing where appropriate. They can talk about how they overcame these challenges, what strengths and beliefs they drew on to help them, and what limiting thoughts they managed to dispel.

Oftentimes parents boast that they never argue in front of kids but if children are mature enough to handle it, I’m a proponent of modelling how to have a respectful difference of opinion.

This means displaying active listening skills and empathy for the other person’s opinion, without necessarily agreeing with them. It is also a valuable learning for your child to see you apologise and admit that you were wrong, so that they know that it is acceptable to make mistakes, and how to take responsibility for errors.

This ability to empathise and really hear another person fully, while also representing your own point of view and taking responsibility, is a very key communication skill for life, relationships and work.

And as I write this, my 13-year-old son who’s looking over my shoulder is crowing that I too have been guilty of making all the mistakes that I write about in this commentary, which brings me to my final point.

READ: Commentary: Career Mobility is the new Career Stability

READ: Commentary: What the uncertainty after receiving A-Level results can teach you about adulting

Above all, perhaps the most important lesson we can teach our children is that we are all, parents included, are human beings. Fallible, vulnerable, trying our best in a messy and unpredictable world.

And that you don’t need to be perfect to be loved, or to have a right to exist. You don’t need to have a “purpose” at 16, but perhaps you can believe that life itself is intrinsically meaningful and to trust in your own curiosity as a compass.

That no one is successful because they haven’t ever made any mistakes, but because they have exercised their muscles by failing on a thousand different days in a thousand different ways, and getting up a thousand and one times – sometimes, with a little bit of help from their parents.

Crystal Lim-Lange is CEO, Forest Wolf and co-author of Deep Human.

SINGAPORE: On a day when attention was focused on the short-term challenges to Singapore in the shape of the COVID-19 outbreak, and with DPM Heng Swee Keat also outlining the Government’s philosophy in financing long-term spending needs, another speech also sought to outline Singapore’s longer-term plans for economic transformation.

In his speech spelling out the Government’s Long-Term Emissions Development Strategy (LEDS), Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean announced the goal of capping Singapore’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, halving it 20 years after that, and in the latter half of the century, achieving net-zero emissions.

These goals are potentially game-changing. In moving the entire structure of the Singapore economy towards meeting these objectives, the Government has painted the picture of a vastly different Singapore for our children and their children.

SHARPENING THE NARRATIVE ON MITIGATION

The evolution of Singapore’s ambitions in climate mitigation over the last decade has been notable.

In 2009, just before the Copenhagen climate conference in 2009, Singapore submitted its pledge to reduce GHG emissions by 16 per cent below “business-as-usual” (BAU) levels by 2020. This target was based on a projection of what emissions would have been, without mitigation measures.

By 2015, Singapore would submit a more ambitious commitment as part of the Paris Agreement. But even then, it was framed around cutting emissions based on “emissions intensity”, or the carbon Singapore emits per dollar of GDP.

READ: Singapore reaffirms commitment to Paris climate agreement after US pullout

READ: Commentary: As time runs out on the climate crisis, Singapore prepares to address the cost of adapting

The target? Reducing emissions intensity by 36 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, and stabilising emissions with the aim of peaking around 2030. Again, this was a largely relative goal, of improving the efficiency of our carbon emissions, from 2005 levels.

The latest commitment announced by SM Teo is, by comparison, absolute. Total GHG emissions from Singapore will stop growing by 2030, and from there, it will halve by 2050. 

READ: Commentary: Recycle or reduce waste? Why Southeast Asia’s ocean plastic pile has no easy answers

In absolute terms, our emissions will stop rising at 65 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents and then trend downwards to eventually reach 33 million tonnes 20 years later.

So while there will be some who will argue that Singapore can yet do more in its global contributions to climate mitigation, the fact is that the Government has painted for itself and the country progressively ambitious targets. The key will be to continually improve on these targets as technology evolves.

The move to an absolute target in emissions should also not be under-estimated. In simple terms, countries which have led the way in cutting emissions have largely been able to do so on the back of access to renewable and alternative cleaner energy sources.

In his speech, SM Teo outlined that even at an ambitious level, solar energy will likely only meet around 4 per cent of Singapore’s current annual electricity needs. 

There are few other alternatives for Singapore. At least for now, it would seem. On the back of the new target are ambitious plans to tap regional power grids, and exploring other alternatives such as solar-derived hydrogen.

SHAPING TRANSFORMATION

Underlying Singapore’s renewed commitments is what SM Teo hinted as a wholesale “transformation” in Singapore’s industry, economy and society. Looking squarely at industry, which contributes 60 per cent of emissions, SM Teo pledged to work with the sector to “make the necessary adjustments”.

READ: Commentary: That low-carbon future for Singapore isn’t so far-fetched

As it stands, a large part of emissions from the industrial sector are from the combustion of fuel in the refining and petrochemical sector. Currently a mainstay in the Singapore economy, the imperative now will be for the Government to work closely with major players in the sector to ensure they play their part in contributing to the absolute emissions reductions.

Indeed, the larger question which will emerge in time to come is whether and how the refining and petrochemical industries will feature in the Singapore economy of 2050 and beyond. If they are here to stay, will they be global leaders in efficiency and clean technology?

Indeed, it is not just industry that will need to transform. The transport sector too, currently contributes some 14 per cent of total emissions in Singapore. 

All eyes then will be on the implementation of the recently announced phasing out of internal combustion engines (ICEs) by 2040, and how far and quickly public transport infrastructure and ridership can keep up.

LISTEN: How ready is Singapore for electric vehicles? A Heart of the Matter podcast

READ: Commentary: Electric vehicles will take over Singapore. But here’s what must happen first

Within society, game-changing transformations will also be needed, if the “50-by-50” target is to be reached. 

For example, building developers will have to design for a warming world, but with far lower reliance on traditional carbon-intensive cooling and air-conditioning. Individuals too will have to make significant lifestyle changes that effectively cap their carbon-emitting activities in 10 years.

The challenges are massive, but opportunities exist. For example, a key pillar of Singapore’s more ambitious commitment is to leverage technologies “which are not yet mature such as carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), and low-carbon fuels,” as SM Teo said.

Here, there is no reason why Singapore can only be a price-taker in adopting these new technologies. Singapore can position itself as a destination to test-bed and create climate solutions, from green finance, to CCUS and clean energy.

WHAT DOES NET-ZERO EMISSIONS MEAN?

The reality is that more can and must always be done.

Urged on by the United Nations, more than 70 countries first signed on to commitments to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 following last September’s climate action summit in New York. As it stands, Singapore has committed to reaching net zero by “as soon as viable in the second half of the century”.

Reaching net zero basically means balancing off carbon emissions through carbon removal, for example, via carbon capture or carbon-offsetting, and has been a key goal in climate action. The science on the importance of the world getting to net-zero emissions is clear.

READ: Commentary: Rising temperatures, fires and floods highlight importance of understanding weather extremes

LISTEN: Heart of the Matter: Talking about the Madrid climate talks, what happened and what’s next?

If we are to ideally limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, net-zero emissions must be attained by 2050. If warming is to be kept to below 2 degrees, then this net-zero goal must be reached by around 2070. Seen in isolation, Singapore’s contribution will look inadequate.

The point, however, is this: Singapore has already achieved and progressively built on its past commitments. It must now deliver again; and in time, strengthen them further. 

The setting of new absolute targets is a positive step. The next steps are just as crucial: Not only in driving further domestic action, but also in pushing international action, for example on carbon markets to allow for carbon-offsets.

From individuals, to companies and at the international level, it is rarely too late for strengthened climate action.

Jaime Ho is Chief Editor at CNA Digital.