A Need To rebrand our Graduates

A friend of mine told me an alarming statistic the other day.  According to 10^th Malaysia Plan, about two-thirds of Malaysia graduate will not be able to find graduate-level employment.  That means that out of the more than 60,000 graduate at all levels each years, about 40,000 of them will not able to get a job commensurate with their qualification.

Its not that we haven’t been educating people.  According to the Ministry of Education website, the numbers of young people going into public institution of higher learning between 2009-2012 have been steadily increasing from 54,495 to 80,885.  Funnily enough, in private institution of higher learning, which generally takes in more student than the public institutions, the numbers have been decreasing from 178,899 to 113,105, over the same period of time.  My guess is that many have been able to afford the private universities and had to go to public one.

But maybe what’s more revealing is the numbers of people who actually graduate from university.  Most public University students do graduate.  In 2009 there were 79,934 graduates, or 98 percent of the intake.  On the other hand, far fewer students graduated from the private universities.  On the other hand, far fewer students graduated from the private universities, only 57,953 of 51 percent compared to the intake.  Which may something about the varying standards in the public and private universities.

Even more interesting for me is the level that students graduate from.  Most university graduate is quite content with getting a first degree, with very few going on to further their degrees.  Which might be an indication of the need to find the job quickly.  But then that first’s degree itself has not made them employable.

There have been several thorough analyses of why our graduates cannot find the jobs.  Most simply do o have the soft skills for the workplace, including communication, leadership skills.  I have never had to interview many people for the jobs but those who do all attest to this inability of candidates to express themselves, The Interesting things is I do meet many young people studying in the local universities who are bright, fluent in English and quite happy to express their views.  But what is obvious is that they are brought up in urban areas and have access to resources that help their confidence.  Yet as a government surveys two years ago stated, most unemployed are Malays from lower income families who lack of command of the English Language. Undoubtedly they also come from rural areas.

In many countries around our region, graduates who cannot find employment are able to go abroad to seek their fortunes.  Not all will be employed to their level of learning, such as Filipina graduates who work as domestic helpers overseas, but the reason they can go abroad at all is because they speak English. Our graduates will not have that option because of poor language skills. I also doubt if ours would be willing to work as domestic helpers overseas just to earn money.

So many exportable skills these days require language fluency.  India has managed to tap into the call centre business because of the availability of English speakers.  So well trained are they in the US you can speak to someone and not realise that the person is actually in Mumbai, India. Here I get calls from telemarketing people who only unable to speak English, they cannot speak beyond the script once you ask difficult question.

Now, we need to worry about these unemployable graduates because we cannot simply bored and frustrated people milling about because many social problems stem from unemployment.  Some might think that because most of our graduates are women, this is not a big problem to deal with because eventually they will get married.  But we not build Universities just to have a lots of housewives, nor for that matter, fast food order takers.  We educate people to help develop the country so they need to be put to good use.

There are many suggestion as to how to redress the situation including retraining.  But perhaps we also need to also rethink employment itself.  There are many NGOs and social organizations that find it hard to get good people because they assume that either they pay badly or they dislike by the Government.  Yet NGO provide individuals with unique personal development experiences, different from other jobs.

We also encourage social entrepreneurship, where people use business skills to actually do society some good, rather than just make profit.  Its a different way of thinking but different as exactly what we need.  Besides, it earned Professor Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, a Nobel Prize.  If Bangladesh can have Nobel Laurete through social entrepreneurship, we might as well try it...Why NoT????