NTU expands curriculum to meet rising manpower demands in high-growth sectors

New majors and specialisations for freshmen kick off this August

Freshmen starting at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) this August will have at least five new academic courses to choose from. NTU is introducing these new offerings to widen future career options of its students in exciting and emerging fields, such as big data analytics and biomedical structural biology. 

“As a university, we need to look into the horizon and anticipate future employers’ needs so that our graduates will be well-placed to build careers not just in established areas but also in the most promising emerging fields,” said NTU Provost, Professor Freddy Boey.

NTU developed the new curriculum offerings in consultation with the industry with a focus on confronting real-world challenges. They are designed to meet the rising demand for skilled manpower across fast-growing and sunrise sectors, such as the global trading and urban solutions industries. 

Employers are enthusiastic that the latest curriculum expansion will help fill the gap for employees with much needed specialist knowledge, such as in business analytics and biomedical structural biology.  

The new undergraduate majors and specialisations that will be introduced in the new Academic Year are:

The new courses were put together after extensive consultations with government and industry, including the Ministry of National Development, IE Singapore and various companies. 

Prof Kam Chan Hin, Senior Associate Provost (Undergraduate Education) said, “The new majors and specialisations will widen our students’ skills and knowledge to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the economy. Most of these new programmes are interdisciplinary by design and bring together NTU’s well-established strengths in engineering, business, science, humanities, arts and social sciences.

“We appreciate the support of important stakeholders such as IE Singapore and the Ministry of National Development. These new courses will certainly widen the career options for our students. More importantly, Singapore will benefit by having a wider diversity of fresh talents who can contribute to the next lap of our nation’s development.”

International Trading Programme – grooming talents for a rapid growth sector

To nurture local talents in the global trading sector, NTU has partnered IE Singapore to design the International Trading Programme targeted at the energy and chemicals, agri-commodities, and mining industries.

The programme will be offered as a special track within the popular Second Major in Business for NTU engineering students. It will also be open to business and maritime studies students as a specialisation. 

The specialisation courses will be taken from the second year of study and integrated into their existing undergraduate curriculum. Students will also gain industry exposure through study visits and internship opportunities at trading firms. After completing the course, students can expect wider career prospects and potentially land jobs in some of the world’s largest commodities and trading firms. 

Chief Executive Officer of IE Singapore, Teo Eng Cheong said, “Singapore is a global trading hub where major international firms converge. The trading sector presents exciting and rewarding job opportunities, not just in trading, but also in risk management, trade finance, shipping and logistics. We expect this sector to continue to flourish and grow in Singapore. We therefore developed the new International Trading Programme as a partnership between IE and NTU to address the growing demand for the manpower in the trading sector.”

In 2013, wholesale trade contributed more than 350,000 jobs. It has been a high growth sector in the past decade, achieving 12% annual value-added growth between 2002 and 2012.

The partnership will also provide for a new Multidisciplinary Centre of Excellence for Trading at NTU's Nanyang Business School to groom talents with technical competencies in the trading industry. This centre will be reaching out to corporate partners to offer scholarships and to organise overseas study trips for students in the International Trading Programme.

Extracted from NTU News Release (17 Feb 2015)