Singapore¡¯s two main universities are making major changes to their curricula and structures to encourage interdisciplinarity and give students the skills they need in the post-Covid world.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) has brought together its largest and most established faculties ¨C the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Faculty of Science ¨C into a new College of Humanities and Sciences, co-headed by the faculties¡¯ two deans. Students entering in 2021 can choose any combination of major, second major, minor or specialty.

Sun Yeneng, the science dean, told?³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ?that he hopes students will come away with the ¡°integrated thinking skills¡± increasingly sought after in a ¡°volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world¡±.

¡°Their learning will be deepened when they reflect on the connections between ideas and concepts across different disciplines,¡± he said.

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Robbie Goh, NUS¡¯ arts and social sciences dean, told?THE?that there is ¡°increasing awareness in academia, industry and government that developing effective solutions to major real-world challenges requires a working knowledge and skills acquired¡­in both STEM and humanities and social sciences subjects¡±.

He?said that common core curricula traditionally involved ¡°baskets of disciplines¡­that bear little regard for the connection between courses¡±. NUS¡¯ new college has a curriculum that was ¡°conceptualised incorporating specially designed courses to introduce our students to interdisciplinarity¡±, he said.

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Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, has been piloting a new common core curriculum, which will be fully introduced in 2021-22. The pilots involved three colleges: engineering, science, and humanities and social sciences. The final modules will focus on specific challenges such as climate change or global health.

¡°As educators, we often ask ourselves, what makes an educated person?¡± asked the NTU president, Subra Suresh. ¡°Those who can thrive in this rapidly changing global environment will have broader interest and knowledge outside of their specific disciplines, while also possessing some deep domain expertise.¡±

The push towards interdisciplinarity has been happening over the past year, for example with the opening of NUS¡¯?Centre on AI Technology for Humankind?(AiTH).

David De Cremer, AiTH¡¯s director and a business professor, told?THE?that ¡°as a society, we need to be careful that we do not overemphasise the importance of technology education over social sciences¡±.

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He warned that ¡°rapid technological development and messages from gurus that ¡®if you don¡¯t become tech-savvy enough, you will be left behind¡¯ has instilled a certain fear among people that they may miss out on career opportunities if they do not think like data scientists.

¡°However, if we sideline social sciences in our educational efforts, then we are creating future generations that will think, act and reason like machines. What¡¯s the point in being a half-baked machine who does not know how to interact with other humans?¡±

In??for?Harvard Business Review in March, Professor De Cremer co-wrote with Garry Kasparov that ¡°AI should augment human intelligence, not replace it¡±.

Mr Kasparov, the chess great who famously IBM¡¯s Deep Blue computer, said during?that education was the one field to have stalled in its development.

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¡°If someone from the 19th century was transported to today, he would recognise nothing except for the classroom, where the teacher in the front of the class is the sole authority,¡± he said. ¡°Any student, with a swipe of the finger on a phone, has access to more data in a few seconds than any professor could ever teach. And so we have to teach them how to process that data.¡±

joyce.lau@timeshighereducation.com