SMU Convocation Speech by Mr Ho Kwon Ping

Welcome to your convocation ceremony.

On Monday, you will officially be the second batch of SMU undergraduates to start your four-year education in our new home – the city campus in Bras Basah. Six years ago, SMU had been both a start-up and an upstart young institution. We were like (and still are) the adrenaline-charged new kid on the block, painting the town red with our wild ideas and energetic verve. Overnight, we became the talk of the town amongst university deans, educators, business leaders, parents and prospective students. Not merely because we were a brand new university and appeared unconventional in our approach. But because we were truly unconventional by being the first to introduce to the Singapore tertiary landscape, a hitherto unknown style of American pedagogy that has since impressed employers with the new breed of confident, articulate and global-oriented graduates we produce year after year.

What is the magic of this unique pedagogy? It is a combination of many factors.

One, we champion a multi-disciplinary approach in designing the curriculum that encourages divergent thinking. In SMU, business students also take lessons in politics and democracy, and attend classes in psychology and life sciences. These are essential knowledge and world perspectives required of today’s business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Second, professors here expect you to speak up a lot during classes. Come prepared for very rigorous exchanges and debates with your classmates and professors. It is an important part of confidence training and presentation skills. The uninitiated think this is all hot air, waffling and unfocused. But this is exactly the situation you are going to face later in boardroom discussions and client meetings. The ability to see clarity in arguments by professionals in their respective trainings, defend your position and seek buy-in for your proposition. There is no better time than now to hone this to a finesse.

Third, SMU places a lot of emphasis on an active student life. You are strongly encouraged to engage in as many activities as your time management allows. Before you know it, you would have acquired valuable leadership, team-building and people skills. In SMU, our student life administrators provide a lot of latitude for you to initiate the many things you want to do.

Fourth, there are plentiful opportunities to experience life overseas even as an undergraduate in SMU. Spend a semester in a foreign university under our overseas exchange programme. Apply for an overseas internship or compete for one of the places on our many Business Study Missions. There are many loans and work study grants in SMU to help finance your overseas stints.

The pioneering years are over. SMU has finally come of age. What is our direction from this point onwards?

It is perhaps appropriate at this juncture to take stock to re-affirm the fundamental vision and raison d’etre of SMU.

SMU’s bedrock mission is to deliver a humanistic, broad-based education where students learn to become individually responsible, socially responsive and intellectually creative young men and women, who understand the critical role of business in the development of our societies and undertake upon themselves the exciting task of leading in this process.

For the second straight year, 100% of our graduates found jobs either before or within six months of graduation. More than half received job offers even before they graduated and three-quarters found jobs within one month of graduation. These are undoubtedly achievements for a six-year-old university and will start a virtuous cycle of success breeding success.

At the same time, we always challenge students to stretch their visions beyond high starting salaries and cushy jet-setting jobs. Right from day one of matriculation, our university administrators have been underscoring the importance of having a strong sense of corporate social responsibility. Each year as I stand here making my convocation speech, I will also take pains to remind freshmen of this. Why do we include community service as a major component in our curriculum? Why do we have courses on business ethics?

First, business studies teach a person that the most important and yet most sordid of skills is how to make more money. Like many American business schools overseas, SMU is quick to recognise the need to temper this financial goal with a strong sense of social responsibility for the disadvantaged around us. Without giving our students a strong moral compass, we will only teach them to be short-lived masters of the universe, who will fly high and too close to the sun, and burn brilliantly in their downfall as so many promising investment bankers, CEOs and CFOs have done in the numerous corporate scandals of our age.

Second, our students must fervently believe – though this may sound incredibly naïve – that the fundamental mission of business is to create a better world. They must not deflect the widespread cynicism about business by hiding behind the mantra of maximizing shareholder value, because business is NOT simply about such a limited goal.

In today’s rapidly globalizing, post-communist and even post-capitalist world, business is as powerful as governments – if not more so – in shaping people’s lives, for better or worse. Therefore, if society demands that those who aspire to be political leaders need to be driven by idealism rather than just the desire to win elections, so too must tomorrow’s business leaders understand – and embrace – their social mission, rather than just desire to become rich by maximizing shareholder value.

This year, we have invited homegrown entrepreneur and a close friend of SMU Mr Tommie Goh as our Guest-of-Honour. It is especially meaningful to have a prominent business leader like Mr Tommie Goh as an inspirational role model to address our 1,345 freshmen here today. In 1988, Mr Goh founded JIT (“Just In Time”) Electronics whose turnover grew, within three short years, from an initial S$100,000 in the first year of operations to over S$100 million. In 1997, Mr Goh was awarded the Rotary-ASME Entrepreneur of the Year. Two years later, he was named Businessmen of the Year by Business Times and DHL, the top accolade for businessmen in Singapore.

In 2000, Mr Goh made a generous personal donation of S$2 million to SMU to establish the Tommie Goh Professorial Chair in Entrepreneurship, underscoring his commitment towards encouraging entrepreneurship in the New Economy. Not many of you would know but Mr Goh is the quintessential self-made man who began his working life cleaning car windshields at Great World Amusement Park and working as a hawker’s assistant. Following his National Service, he served with the Singapore Armed Forces for 14 years before pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams in 1981. He has never looked back. A passion for work and tenacity in overcoming obstacles were the driving forces behind his success. Today, Mr Goh is the Chairman of 2G Capital Pte Ltd, a private investment company investing in listed as well as private non-listed companies in the Asia Pacific economies. I would like to thank Mr Goh for making time to speak to SMU freshmen at our convocation ceremony.

In closing, I would like to encourage this new generation of SMU students to carry on the torch lit by your pioneers – to keep the SMU derring-do flame burning, to be trailblazers in whatever you do, not to be hemmed in by conventions and traditions and to remember our roles as socially responsible and socially conscious individuals in all your business decisions.

Welcome to your university.