Look Forward To

The highlighted (The New Paper, 31 May 2013) is wrong.

The writer has obviously misanalysed the to as being part of an infinitive, i.e. to study – an error that is exceedingly common in Singapore, even among members of the teaching profession.

It is worth remembering that there are two types of to: one is a preposition (e.g. Jane went to Munich last month); the other helps us form to-infinitives (e.g. to travel).

The to in the highlighted portion of the article is in fact a preposition: it belongs to the multiword verb look forward to, often also called a phrasal-prepositional verb because it has the structure verb+adverb+preposition.

As is required of prepositions, look forward to is followed by a noun, or something functioning as a noun, in this case the clause (more specifically, a noun clause) studying at the polytechnic ... supposed to start yesterday. If I am asked ‘What was he looking forward to?’ the answer would be ‘Studying at the polytechnic ...’, not ‘Study at the polytechnic...’.