Just as we were debating whether engineering is a dead-end career in Singapore, I noticed a common trait among the 2008 batch of President's Scholarship recipients.

None of them is going to be an engineer.

From what President Nathan said in his speech, these scholars will all be heading to foreign universities for their studies. (Hey, btw, didn't Professor Kishore Mahbubani, who's himself a President's Scholar and now heads the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, wondered aloud why parents are sending their children overseas when our NUS is good enough? Well, he's comparing with Australian uni's, but you get my point.)

Two of this year's P-scholars will head to Cambridge, one to read Law and the other to study Medicine. Another, a Stanford-bound future police honcho, will be taking Economics. The remaining two will respectively read Economics, Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick, and Ethics, Politics and Economics at Yale University.

You may argue that Medicine and Econs are science-related courses, but I contend that these graduates are not going to build things or write software in their careers. No matter how technical their minds are, they will never be true engineers.

I declare engineering officially dead in Singapore.

http://www.salary.sg/2008/none-of-th...g-engineering/