THE head of Socso’s Employment Insurance Office Mohd Sahar Darusman had written an interesting article “Graduate mismatch in the labour market” (Sunday Star, September 27, 2020).
It is a long article in which he explains graduate under-employment and unemployment in the private sector.
He says that there is a glaring mismatch of graduates in the job market, in other words, more and more graduates are taking on jobs meant for non-graduates.
Thus, if this mismatch is not addressed, he thinks that it might have serious implications for the development of human resources in the country.
Given the increase in the number of public and private universities in the last twenty years or so, graduates entering the labour market are on the increase.
Between 2001-2016, graduate employment expanded at 7.2%.
Does higher education translate into increased level of employment?
However, this increase was more marked in the non-graduate employment rather than those in graduate employment.
This article is based on the underlying assumption that graduates are better skilled and qualified than those who are not.
The problem is not much with the graduates, but the inability of the private sector to respond to their employment needs.
The private sector in fact does the disservice by employing graduates in the non-graduate category.
I am not sure if those without university degrees and those having certificates and diplomas can be judged as having lower skills than university graduates.
Mohd Sahar’s underlining assumption is that university graduates are more skilled and talented in comparison with those without tertiary qualifications.
Yes, from a quantitative perspective given the number of public and private universities in the country that is only natural that more and more graduates will be entering the job market.
Lack of jobs might therefore force them to accept low paying ones, once reserved for those without any tertiary qualifications.
Mohd Sahar has come out with some impressive statistics on the job market, but fails to understand why despite the large number of graduates being added to the labour market, their employability remains unimpressive.
This requires me to touch upon those aspects as to the quality of graduates we produce and to what extent they are suited to the needs of the industry.
The writer assumes that those graduating from universities are simply assumed to be qualified, skilled and readily marketed in the private sector in comparison with non-graduates.
Is this true?
Although there are different categories of graduates, it is not that all of them have superior skills.
Do graduates’ skills match industry requirements?
Many of these graduates entering the job market apart from their tertiary credentials might not have relevant skills to offer to the prospective employers.
In many instances, employers prefer to take in workers with certificate or diploma qualification so that they could be paid less compared to graduates.
The country might be churning out more and more graduates every year, but have these graduates increased their skills to match the human resource needs in the country?
Sadly, the national average of the country’s skill level hovers around 30% to 32%. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to speak about the mismatch between graduates and their skill levels.
We might have poured huge amount of resources into the country’s educational system to create and sustain a viable and highly skilled labour force.
But I am not sure whether we have taken into account the needs of the industry, the need to create a skilled and competitive labour force.
We did not have the foresight to cultivate and nurture the strong links between universities and the needs of the industry.
This mismatch is more apparent now more than before especially when there is an imperative to move away from labour-intensive to more capital-intensive production based on information technology.
The need to be receptive to industry needs
The other historical educational fallacy was the habit of streaming good students to pursue tertiary education in universities and those academically not qualified to pursue certificate and diploma programmes in technical institutes or polytechnics.
Things might have improved now with the entry of better qualified students but the damage was done earlier. There must be policy imperative to address and resolve this bifurcation of mechanical separation of students.
It is not about our graduates not getting the right kind of jobs, but rather whether our universities are producing graduates with competitive skills and talents to match the needs of the industry.
In recent years, some universities have started collaboration with industries in terms of equipping their graduates with the right kind of skills and talents so that they would be gainfully employed and rewarded.
There are more than 20 public universities in the country that are producing thousands of graduates to enter the private sector.
A small portion might enter the already bloated and inefficient civil service, but the bulk had to be absorbed by the private sector.
For the graduates to obtain the right kind of jobs, they will need to have the right kind of skills and talents.
Unfortunately, the government is not in the position to dictate to employers in the private sector as to who they can employ and who they cannot.
The rules are different
In conclusion, rather than simply comparing the graduates with non-graduates for not getting the right jobs, I would advise Mohd Sahar as the head of an important agency to look into the quality of graduates that we produce from the numerous universities every year and why they are not fitting into the job market as expected.
Is it because there are few jobs or they don’t have the talents and expertise to be part of the fourth industrial revolution (IR4.0)
Or is it because the skills and talents of graduates and non-graduates have been narrowed over the years?
Prof Dr. P. Ramasamy is Deputy Chief Minister 2 of Penang
