Singapore Smart Nation: Journey into a New Digital Landscape for Higher Education

Singapore is a sovereign city-state, an island country located in Southeast Asia with a population of 5.6 million. Lacking natural resources but strategically located, Singapore has built its competitive strength over the decades on a commitment to human capital development through education. It is now recognized as a superpower human capital hub that offers a highly-respected education brand both within the region and globally. This positioning has been enhanced by the transformation of the higher education landscape in Singapore by swift advances in the integration of emerging technologies in the process of knowledge acquisition and transmission. Such technologies have enormous potential to shape a future education model characterized by enhanced inclusivity, individualization, and interactivity. However, there are risks associated with privacy and security concerns, potential displacement of the human educator role, inequitable access to technology, and the digital literacy proficiency gap among students. This chapter discusses Singapore’s commitment to transforming its educational environment through the adaptation and adoption of emerging technologies, the role of government policies and initiatives to support innovation in education and more broadly, and the contribution of strategic partnerships with foreign higher education institutions. The research objective is to identify the elements of the new digital landscape in higher education, to highlight their implications and to describe the broader economic and policy context in which they sit. The methodology used is a literature review to identify the nature and extent of research evidence on this topic followed by an analysis whose results are presented using a SWOT framework.