At an extraordinary general meeting held on 10 November 2016, members of the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) voted in support of the Ministry of Education's (MOE) proposal to make SIM University (UniSIM) Singapore's sixth autonomous university (AU), under the ambit of the Ministry.
Mr Tan Soo Jin, Chairman, SIM Governing Council, said: "Making UniSIM an AU is a positive move to better fulfil the University's role in the evolving tertiary and manpower training landscape, particularly in alignment with SkillsFuture. We are heartened that SIM members are supportive of the future direction of UniSIM. Moving forward, SIM will work with MOE and UniSIM to ensure a smooth transition for the University to deepen its role in offering flexible, work-integrated and practice-oriented education pathway for working adults."
The University will formally become an AU, after an Act of Parliament is passed, which is likely to take place next year. The new AU will focus on applied education in the domain of social sciences – targeted at both students and adult learners, thus preparing them for socially-related careers, including social work, human resource, psychology, early childhood education, and law (focusing on family and criminal law). It will retain limited offerings in other areas such as accountancy, business and engineering.
The proposal by the Government for UniSIM to become Singapore's sixth AU was announced by Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills) Ong Ye Kung at UniSIM's 2016 Convocation held in October. In his speech, Minister Ong shared that the recommendation was in recognition of the University’s important role in the nation’s education and skills training landscape to provide more opportunities and pathways for Singaporeans to pursue lifelong learning.
