NUS SCALE Dean Chai Kah Hin on making learning a habit for life

NUS SCALE Dean Chai Kah Hin on making learning a habit for life

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Many commuters spend the journey to work scrolling through short videos or catching up on the latest microdrama. Associate Professor Chai Kah Hin wonders: what if some of that time could become an opportunity to learn?

"My dream is to have an app where people commute to work and watch our lifelong learning content instead of TikTok," said the Dean of the NUS School of Continuing and Lifelong Education (SCALE).

Behind the light-hearted proposition is a serious challenge. Unlike undergraduates who can devote much of their time to study, adult learners juggle work, family and other commitments. In Assoc Prof Chai's words, learning can come with considerable "friction".

Reducing that friction - and making learning part of everyday life - is central to his vision of lifelong education. As SCALE marks its 10th anniversary, that philosophy points both to how far SCALE has come and where it hopes to go next: towards a university that learners can return to throughout their lives.

Lifelong learning in NUS' DNA

When SCALE was established in 2016, its focus was on degree programmes for adult learners and continuing education courses. A decade later, Assoc Prof Chai sees its most significant achievement not simply in the number of programmes it runs, but in how lifelong learning has become embedded across NUS.

"The proudest achievement of SCALE is moving very quickly from the early days as simply a school that offered the Bachelor of Technology programmes and some short courses…to today, really a system enabler," said Assoc Prof Chai, who became SCALE's third Dean in 2025.

"We have evolved into a catalyst and an enabler [that makes] lifelong learning an integral part of NUS."

Assoc Prof Chai credits his predecessors - Professor Wei Kwok Kee (2016-2020) and Professor Susanna Leong (2020-2025) - as well as colleagues across SCALE and NUS, for building the foundations on which the School continues to grow.

Over the decade, SCALE has supported NUS in delivering more than 130,000 training places in SkillsFuture Singapore-funded courses. The number of such courses offered by NUS grew from three in 2016 to 550 in 2025, with 14 faculties and schools participating, up from two.

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For Assoc Prof Chai, the next challenge is meeting learners where they are. He recalled engineers working in Woodlands who would charter a bus together to reach NUS for their master's classes. Even then, getting to campus on time was difficult.

"We should not expect them to adopt the lifestyle of undergraduates and then come to university to learn from us," he said. "We have to go to them."

That thinking is also behind SCALE's experimentation with bite-sized, problem-based learning inspired by microdramas. Short episodes begin with a problem, offer an answer, then end with another question to draw learners further into the subject - an attempt to fit learning more naturally into busy lives.

Learning when knowledge is everywhere

The question of what universities are for becomes more pressing as AI makes knowledge increasingly accessible.

Assoc Prof Chai has already seen that shift in his classroom. One student fed his lecture notes and recordings into an AI tool, allowing the material to be customised and condensed for listening at the gym.

"They can take your knowledge [and] customise it in whatever ways they want," he said. "What is my value as an instructor?"

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His answer is not for universities to compete with AI as repositories of information. Instead, as knowledge becomes increasingly democratised, he believes education must place greater emphasis on helping learners ask meaningful questions, exercise judgement and apply what they know.

"AI is very good when you know what you do not know," he said. If someone already knows the question, AI can help find answers quickly. "AI is useless if you do not know what you do not know. And so this is a blind spot."

"We need to teach our students how to identify meaningful questions," he added.

That requires learners to empathise with stakeholders, distinguish meaningful signals from noise and develop the systems thinking needed to "see the forest, not just the trees". Exposure to different disciplines and perspectives becomes even more valuable in developing that broader view.

Even as knowledge becomes available on demand, Assoc Prof Chai believes learning remains a human and social process. Universities bring together people with shared interests but different perspectives, creating opportunities to "discuss, debate, exchange views" - experiences that remain important in the age of AI.

Learning across a lifetime

If technology is changing how people learn, longer and more varied lives are also broadening why they learn.

Assoc Prof Chai envisages a university that people encounter repeatedly: as undergraduates, as working adults developing new capabilities or navigating career transitions, and later in life when they may have more time to pursue other interests.

"At some point when they are retired, they might then come back to the university," he said. "They want the human touch again. They have a bit more free time. They want to reconnect and rediscover the joy of learning."

Initiatives such as SCALE's Joy of Learning and Distinguished Senior Fellowship programmes reflect this broader view of lifelong education - one driven not solely by employability, but also by curiosity, personal growth and contribution.

For Assoc Prof Chai, sustaining that desire to learn ultimately comes down to something deceptively simple: habit.

"For lifelong learning to happen, it has to be a habit," he said.

He has put the idea into practice himself. For years, his default after boarding a flight was to switch on the in-flight entertainment. Then he began buying a book before flying and setting himself a goal to finish it before landing. Over time, reading became the habit and the screen increasingly stayed off.

The same principle underpins his hope for SCALE's next decade: that learning becomes not an occasional response to disruption, but an integral part of life.

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By 2036, he hopes SCALE will be a place people instinctively turn to when they want to learn - whether it already offers what they need, can develop something with them or can connect them with a trusted partner.

More fundamentally, he hopes that relationship begins from the moment students enter NUS.

"When our students join NUS as a Year 1 undergraduate, they already think about this [as] a beginning…of a long journey," he said.

"Learning for employability, learning for growth…but also learning for fulfilment," he added. "We think all can coexist, and can actually mutually reinforce each other."

These questions about how people learn, work and adapt in the age of AI will take centre stage at the NUS Lifelong Learning Festivalon 26 and 28 September 2026. Themed "Human in the Age of AI", the Festival will explore the changing relationship between people and technology, and how lifelong learning can help individuals and organisations navigate a rapidly evolving world.