On my flight back from Singapore recently I sat next to a pleasant online travel manager who was born and raised in Singapore. I told her how much I enjoyed my nearly week-long visit to the city-state, and how impressed I was in general with the education level of many of the people I met and those with whom I would be working during the editorial, production and marketing of my book.

The agent screwed up her sun-tanned face as though she had smelled something bad. She said, “It’s so competitive. Look at the United States or Australia: they aren’t as competitive and yet their economies are so strong.”

“Well, I did see most students on the subway coming home around five o’clock. You mean, they have to study all the time.”

“Too much,” she said, shifting in the narrow seat. “It’s better now, but the system is so results oriented.” I took that students must study-to-the-tests, instead of studying to learn or to create.

“Is that a Singaporean thing or an Asian thing?” I asked. “Chinese students have to study really hard, too.”

She thought for a moment, then said, “In Singapore we have no choice. We don’t have anything worth selling on to anyone else except our people. We export our people.”

There are worse exports for a service economy, I suppose.