Malaysia: becoming an education hub to serve national development

Abstract

During the past 15 years, Singapore has been decidedly committed to transitioning from the Global Schoolhouse project to a twenty-first-century knowledge hub. This chapter describes key initiatives introduced to remodel the city-state into a global knowledge and education hub and a site for the continuing accumulation of capital, talent, and knowledge. Notwithstanding its clarity of vision and strategy, there are a number of practical complexities confronting Singapore's plans to leapfrog into the value-added realms of knowledge- and innovation-related production. The chapter interrogates the state's driving rationales which foregrounds the Global North in imagination and aspiration. An argument is made instead for reimagining the local as a space for the ideas and insights which support creativity and innovation.