SINGAPORE – Mr Tay Tse Wan, 60, has completed his fourth diploma, while his son, Mr Tay Quan Kai, 23, is onto his second.
In May, they will graduate from their specialist diploma course in artificial intelligence solutions development, which they took together at Temasek Polytechnic. For much of the past year, father and son sat side by side at their laptops at home twice a week for their online lessons, often giving up their weekends to do schoolwork.
It was the older Mr Tay’s idea to ask Quan Kai, a national serviceman and the younger of his two sons, to take the part-time AI course with him.
Mr Tay, a regional sales manager, says: “You hear a lot about AI. If you don’t know how to use AI, you’re not up to date. To boost my confidence, I got Quan Kai to come with me as I had stopped studying for so long and I had no coding knowledge.”
The last examination he took was in 2019, at the age of 54. It was his third O-level English examination, after his Chinese-medium education in secondary school at Chung Cheng High School (Branch) decades ago. He failed that 2019 test, though he had achieved his best result 30 years ago with a borderline pass.
He got Bs and Cs for his tests and projects for his recent AI course, which the Government’s SkillsFuture scheme funded. It was “a good result” for someone with “zero knowledge” of coding, he reckons.
Mr Tay, who holds multiple diplomas and degrees, was a lifelong learner long before the term gained currency.
After NS following his first diploma in electronics at Singapore Polytechnic, he dived into continuous learning. The youngest of four sons, he had seen how his tradesman father and housewife mother scrimped and saved.
He says: “My father had to work very hard to meet the needs of the family, especially our studies. He did not complete his primary school education. This was common in the 1950s and earlier.
“Therefore, I told myself that I needed to work hard, especially when I started my first job as a technician in computer repairs. I realised that it was insufficient just to have a poly diploma.
“The only path I knew then was to gain as many certificates as possible. As I carried on with my part-time studies as a young man, I realised it was not the certificates that mattered. It was the knowledge I gained that I could apply to my work.”
