PROJECTED DEMAND FOR UNIVERSITY GRADUATES

Dr Lee Tsao Yuan asked the Minister for Trade and Industry whether he will make available the methodology, assumptions and computations resulting in the projected requirement of 17,000 university graduates per year by Year 2000 to sustain economic growth.

Mr Lee Yock Suan: The Council on Professional and Technical Education (CPTE) is responsible for projecting the demand for university, polytechnic and ITE graduates. It adopts a demand-based econometric model to project skilled manpower needs in the short to medium term, based on projected GDP growth rates and labour productivity. Projections on demand and supply are derived from production functions and industry/occupation/education profile matrices. The model is regularly refined to meet changing macro-economic conditions. New variables and data are considered as and when they are available and relevant to the model.

CPTE uses the manpower projections as a planning guide to identify broad trends in the demand and supply of skilled manpower. This is validated by feedback from industry and graduate employment surveys. These surveys serve as checks on the demand for skilled manpower by different sectors of the economy.

As this is a highly technical subject, my Ministry will brief the Member if she is interested in the details of the model. Table - School Fees and Miscellaneous Fees (Cols. 1883-1884)