Australian Universities in Top Tier for Work in Singapore Excludes Adelaide

The Singapore Ministry of Manpower has included seven of Australia's top universities in their top tier for work passes in the COMPASS Program, due to take effect in September. Graduates of these universities get twice as many points as others, towards a work pass in Singapore.  

1. Australian National University, 
2. University of Melbourne Australia, 
3. University of New South Wales, 
4. University of Queensland, 
5. University of Sydney, 
6. University of Western Australia.

These are seven out of the eight universities in Australia's Group of Eight leading universities. Missing from Singapore's list is the University of Adelaide, which comes lowest of the eight on global rankings. However, it should be noted that the ranking systems tend to be skewed towards research quality, and have little to do with the quality of education provided. Singapore's use of these rankings is questionable, unless the workers are being recruited for research jobs, not business, or industry. 

Education Jobs Anywhere

Yesterday one of the well known online job platforms sent me a list of openings: four were in Canberra (three government jobs, one government contractor),plus one in Perth, and one in China. The four Canberra jobs were labelled "On-site", the Perth and China ones "Remote". The two remote jobs were in education: one was for a well known Australian Learning Management System : "This role can be based anywhere in Western Australia, the Asia Pacific region, UK or Europe! Just let us know where you are when you apply.". The China job was for a professor at a university. This has implications for Australian universities, who now have to compete for staff anywhere in the world. It also has security implications, where staff may apply for jobs in other countries, and reveal details of the sensitive projects they are working on.