SINGAPORE – All incoming undergraduates at the Singapore Management University (SMU) from 2023 get a foundational understanding of sustainability issues.

This move will be expanded in 2024 to require all incoming undergraduates to attain an intermediate mastery of sustainability before graduation by completing at least one course in the field.

This is part of an effort to prepare students for jobs that do not exist yet, but could enter the growing field. This effort has become the business of higher education institutions everywhere, said provost Timothy Clark in an interview with The Straits Times in February.

What these future jobs will look like or require is unclear, but SMU is not leaving the development of necessary skills to chance, said Professor Clark, outlining how universities can build a talent pipeline for the emerging “green economy”.

Professor Clark said: “There isn’t necessarily a clear career path or job opportunities in all aspects of the green economy which can make it quite difficult to prepare students for particular industries or particular occupations.

“These jobs are still developing – the role of chief sustainability officer is a very recent introduction in many companies… the career paths and job opportunities are themselves emergent.”

To train students for these roles, a close relationship with the industry is crucial, he said.

He said: “We are a very engaged university. Our city location enables us to be a very porous, open community with industry.

“What we’re doing essentially is building relationships with key organisations and industries to learn how these skill sets are emerging and then translating them into our programmes.”

How does SMU figure out what skills the future will need?

The green economy is set to grow very significantly over the coming years, both in Singapore and the rest of the world, said Prof Clark.

And so there will be many new job opportunities for students as well as new skills that they need to develop in order to be able to take advantage of them, he added.

The numbers bear this out. A report released by SkillsFuture Singapore in 2022 found that demand for workers with skills in the digital, green and caregiving spheres has surged over the past four years.

Skills related to sustainability came in hot. Demand for skills in green facilities management grew 23 times, while demand for sustainable investment management increased by 15.5 times.

Another 2022 report by consultancy Bain & Company and Temasek Holdings found that green investment has picked up regionally, with South-east Asia getting US$$15 billion ($20 billion) in cumulative investments since 2020, with the majority going to renewables and the built environment.

The report also found that entrepreneurial efforts are also focusing on building and scaling sustainable solutions, especially in the energy and agri-food sectors.

But identifying the specific skills students will need to take advantage of this growth is the challenge facing educational institutions, especially given the rapid pace of development in the area which can quickly render skills and knowledge obsolete.

Said Prof Clark: “We talk to them frequently to understand how they’re developing, what their sense of critical skills is.

“And we work with them in terms of internships so that our students can build those understandings early on.”

This understanding also feeds back into the university, where lecturers use it to design their courses appropriately and make sure that they are keeping abreast of changes that dictate the skills required in different industries.

The centre is supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and nine founding partners: Bank of China, BNP Paribas, Fullerton Fund Management, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Schroders, Standard Chartered Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and UBS Group AG.

After figuring out what skills the green economy will need, the next step is to get them to students.

“Our aim is that from 2023, all of our students will have a foundational mastery of sustainability issues.”

This entails taking a freshman module in the field.