A COUPLE of decades ago, a university degree meant a guaranteed path to a well-paid, stable career. Unfortunately, this is no longer the case - graduate unemployment is no longer even news.
Unemployment among recent graduates has risen from 86,534 graduates in 2010 to 170,105 in 2018. Over the years the problem snowballs because fresh graduates enter a labour market that is already crowded with the previous year's unemployed graduates.
What is more problematic, employers would pick the fresh graduates instead of graduates from last year who would have had about a year of the unemployment spell.
Clearly, the national goal to increase the rate of participation in higher education for the expansion of society also brings with it the problem of graduate unemployment.
With a large supply of graduates, employers can be picky and it is often the case where graduates were pushed down to take up non-graduate jobs, which then makes it more difficult for the non-graduates to find a job until eventually they are forced into unemployment.
The overall system results in a huge skill wastage and inefficient investment. The question remains, should we continue to expand the participation rate in universities?
Technical and vocational education and training (TVET) is a good example of an alternative door to employment which provides practical training in technical and vocational fields. We can't rely on universities to produce custom-made graduates for every specific industry.
Instead, universities have played their role in harnessing general soft skills such as teamwork skills in working together to complete assignment reports, analytical skills through exams and tests, communication skills when presenting ideas in group projects, and thinking skills through various evaluation activities.
Industrial training, on the other hand, has been providing working experience and many interns were offered jobs immediately after finishing their internship.
It is evident from the feedback from the majority of graduates that industrial training has benefited them. We do acknowledge many issues related to the ineffectiveness of internship but overall, the advantages have surpassed the disadvantages of industrial training in terms of harnessing various working skills.
What is more important, however, is that employers should provide on-the-job training specific to the industry needs. Nonetheless, employers are continually voicing disappointment that many graduates could not demonstrate basic skills, particularly in communication and the ability to speak English.
University graduates are said to be lacking in the ability to communicate well particularly in English, ability to work effectively with others, analytical skills, decision-making skills, solving a problem, and working professionally and ethically.
Universities have embedded soft skills development in their curriculum but we cannot expect that it should work perfectly, considering lecturers meet their students in large classes of 200 to 300 or even more students, for a few hours a week, where the opportunity to develop various sets of soft skills are limited.
Despite the low face-to-face learning time, initiatives such as engaging students in problem-based learning and providing exposure to real-life data and problems have been practised quite widely.
The country's reliance on low-skilled foreign workers has also contributed to increasing unemployment. Companies can obtain low skilled workers easily at a cheap cost and then blame it on the graduates who are not willing to take up dirty jobs.
We know a lot of Malaysians workers are willing to commute to a neighbouring country to work in 3D jobs because of more attractive pay.
The real problem in the difficulties of finding workers in our 3D sector is because the wages offered are too low while the inequality in salaries between CEO and workers is increasing.
We should not blame the graduates for their lack of communication skills. The industry should play a bigger role by providing on-the-job training and create more collaboration with universities.
Our graduates are not lazy, as evident by many of them being willing to participate in the gig economy. Many even took up jobs that were below the minimum salary.
We should find the missing link between the production of graduates and the absorption in the labour market.
The writer is a senior lecturer at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya. The writer can be contacted at diana.abdwahab@um.edu.my