Singapore-based Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) Asia plans to increase its student body by 40 percent post-Covid and to open a new dedicated private education institution on the island named ERAU Asia Institute to reduce its reliance on local partner academies.
“Huge growth potential exists, because there’s such a large, growing aviation industry in Asia,” Matthew Flaherty, vice-chancellor and head of ERAU Asia, told AIN. “Airlines are growing; airports are being built all over the place. To support that, pilots, air traffic controllers, and airport managers are needed. This is repeated across Asia, and that doesn’t even include China. China is an entire market in itself. Even if you take China out of the equation, there’s still such a great opportunity for growth.”
ERAU Asia operates under the U.S.-based institution’s "Worldwide" campus model, with more than 100 locations. Main campuses operate in Daytona Beach, Florida, and Prescott, Arizona, while others call metro areas, such as Orlando, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Seattle home. Still others cater to members of the U.S. military.
In Singapore, aviation has blossomed, evidenced in the five-fold increase in the number of institutions devoted to the discipline, from three to at least 15 in a decade, Flaherty said. Embry-Riddle established ERAU Asia in Singapore in 2010, and teaching began in January 2011. The student body has grown from 50 to about 500 today. But for Covid-19, another 200 would likely have joined.
“We’ve graduated over the years just over 600 students from the different degree programs," he noted. "Our Singapore campus graduates enjoy about a 92 percent placement rate. They’re very quickly taken on by industry, which is eager to hire our students at various levels.”
ERAU focuses on bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and also offers Ph.D. options. About 90 percent of students study in bachelor’s programs; many graduate with a bachelor’s in aeronautics and a specialization or minor in aviation maintenance. Smaller numbers take recently launched engineering or business analytics programs. At 85 percent of the total, younger students study full-time; the rest take evening classes or study on weekends.
“Over the last 10 years, we’ve taken the opportunity to grow our presence in a part of the world that’s really exciting when it comes to aviation,” Flaherty said. “There is great growth potential, and that’s part of the reason we chose Singapore. We wanted a location that was business-friendly and that had a strong position on education, which it certainly is and has. The people of Singapore are really the only natural resource here. There’s a great commitment to education and training.”
A third of ERAU’s Singapore students go into airlines and airport management, such as operations or human resources. A third go into MRO, given the number of job opportunities that exist in Singapore. Another third take jobs in air traffic control and regulation or work in ancillary aviation support industries.
Not all Asia campus students train to become pilots. A flight training option exists, but ERAU does not offer it in Singapore; they do academic work in Singapore, and then go to Daytona Beach to take flying courses over a 12-month period. “There’s certainly a demand for pilots, but a lot of our students are going into the MRO industry,” said Flaherty. ERAU Asia partners with Singapore Aviation Academy (SAA), Singapore University of Social Sciences, and the Entrepreneurial Resource Center Institute (ERCi) to deliver its programs.
Through SAA, it offers part-time, blended-delivery graduate programs for working professionals, while at ERCi, students earn part-time and full-time undergraduate degrees.
About 75 percent of students are Singaporean, but the number of international students, often from Indonesia, Malaysia, or South Korea, continues to rise. “India and Sri Lanka probably comprise some of our largest represented countries in Singapore,” explained Flaherty. “We’ve only been focused on the international aspect of growing the campus for about the last five years. Singapore is a relatively small market in the grand scheme of things in Asia and home to only 5.5 million people. There’s a huge opportunity for us to grow the size of our campus in Singapore once we start to bring in more international students...Travel restrictions have impacted our ability to bring them in. We’re always open to another physical presence in Asia if the right opportunity presents itself.”
ERAU also maintains partnerships with universities in Korea (Korea Aerospace University) and China (Chongqing Jiaotong University), offering dual enrollment and student exchange. “We have very close partnerships with institutions that are also, like Embry-Riddle, doing aviation training and education in places like Korea, Japan, and China,” he said. “We see those more as areas where we could partner as opposed to looking at them as competition.”
Full-time students sometimes take online classes to shorten degree time to three years or less. Embry-Riddle has provided online learning for many years, starting in the late 1990s; even before that, it offered correspondence and distance learning. Covid-19 put ERAU at a huge advantage because it had already established a learning management system designed for delivery either in-classroom or online.
“Even before Covid, online was a rapidly expanding area at Embry-Riddle," said Flaherty. "Students enjoy flexibility and can attend class wherever they are in the world. People in aviation, particularly pilots, are global: for them, having to be in one place at a particular time each week can be difficult. Online allows study as schedules permit. We’ve seen quite a bit of growth in the online area and we see that continuing.”