Giữ nhân tài cho khu vực nhà nước

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the Singaporean system of scholarships (học bổng)

the salary of civil servants (cán bộ công chức) at the entry level (cấp nhập cảnh) and most middle management positions (các vị trí quản lý cấp trung) is generally lower (by a small by noticeable amount) than that of comparative private sector (khu vực riêng tư) employment, for the level of education etc. The real tool by which the government secures (bảo đảm) manpower (nhân lực) for the civil service is a system of government scholarships. Singapore provides scholarships to high-school-equivalent students to fund their university education (giáo dục bậc  đại học) (either in Singapore or overseas), in exchange for which the student is bonded to (được liên kết với) work for the government for a period of 4 – 6 years after graduation (tốt nghiệp). For talented (có tài) low-income students, this is naturally an appealing option (tùy chọn hấp dẫn), and is win-win from the government’s point of view. What Singapore has successfully done, however, is create a set of social norms in which taking such a scholarship is seen as prestigious (uy tín), and not something merely done out of need, such that many middle-class or even quite wealthy (giàu có) students take up the scholarship despite not needing it to fund their education. The incentive (khích lệ) for them is the fast-tracking (theo dõi nhanh) of scholars (relative to those employed through normal means) into higher positions within the civil service, a practice which is essentially an open secret (bí mật mở). You could also think of this as a modern re-creation of the Chinese imperial exam system (hệ thống kỳ thi hoàng gia), without the bad parts, and I do think the cultural connection (kết nối văn hóa) is not unimportant.

Singapore is often seen as a model for other developing countries for any number of the policies it adopts. But I think one truly underrated (đánh giá thấp) high impact policy is this scholarship system. It largely solves the problem governments in many countries face of keeping talent in the public sector, while redressing (khắc phục) some degree of inequality (of course, the scale is limited). To a government, the cost of funding the higher education of a couple hundred students a year (Singapore’s birth cohort is small, after all) is relatively insignificant, even at the most expensive American colleges. I’ve always thought of this policy as one of the single lowest-cost, highest-impact things that other developing countries can borrow from Singapore: a marginal revolution, if you like.