CYBERJAYA: Over 90 per cent of the Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme graduates are easily marketable for jobs.
Providing this assurance, the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) is now going into overdrive by actively working with foreign accreditation bodies from countries such as Germany, to ensure exceptionally high-quality TVET education.
MQA chief executive officer, Prof Datuk Dr Mohammad Shatar Sabran said that such an empowerment agenda had become one of the initiatives aggressively carried out by the agency.
"As the national higher education's accreditation body, MQA always strives to ensure and improve the quality of TVET in the country.
"This is in line with the intention of the Minister of Higher Education, Datuk Seri Dr Noraini Ahmad, to make TVET no longer just the second choice for students to continue their studies," he said.
He was commenting on the intentions expressed by the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) to strengthen TVET so its qualifications were on par with other graduates.
Mohammad Shatar said the quality of learning given to graduates was the same regardless of whether they were at universities or TVET institutions.
"TVET-offered programmes are based on the needs of the industry as well as their respective fields of expertise, in the context of an extensive job and career market.
"The quality of education in local higher education institutions is always at a good level because MQA will never compromise in terms of quality at all institutions," he said.
Mohammad Shatar said it was for this reason that TVET graduates had a bright opportunity in the job market when the level of marketability of their graduates exceeded 90 per cent every year.
"Hopefully, Malaysia will be able to improve the image of TVET on par with developed countries and further succeed in attracting international students to study at local higher education institutions, whether in the field of TVET or others," he said.