Out-of-job grads
Posted by DAVID BC TAN under: Malaysian schools on 10 Nov 2005.
As if Malaysia’s education system is not in a bad enough shape, here’s more bad news. Human Resources Minister Datuk Dr Fong Chan Onn said the week-long census carried out by the Economic Planning Unit of the Prime Minister’s Department uncovered 59,250 graduates looking for jobs.
The New Straits Times reported Dr Fong saying 81 per cent of those jobless had attended public universities and that the three main reasons the graduates cited for not getting jobs were:
- No job experience (49.7%)
- Poor command of the English language and lacking in communication skills (33.3 per cent)
- The courses they took in universities were not relevant to jobs available in the market (32.2%).
Another report in the Star had this to add about unemployed graduates:
- They want only the easy jobs
- They think they should not be inconvenienced by their work
- They do not have social skills
- They are just not hungry enough
It appears one reason for their poor attitude is due to over-protective parents who spoilt junior rotten by not giving him or her responsibilities at home. Of course there’s the over emphasis on scoring A’s, and excessive tuition, but I can almost hear parents complain that it’s the system that’s to blame. There’s this confusion and parents can’t tell schooling from education, and pity the kid who has to pay for the misapprehension. Something’s seriously amiss with education in the country and it’s a blight that’s tainted schools from primary to university levels.
A recent survey in the World Universities Rankings compiled by Times Higher Education Supplement (THES) revealed that Malaysia’s premier university Universiti Malaya (UM) fell sharply from 89th place in 2004 to 169th place this year. That’s an 80-place plunge. Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) was in 111th place last year but this year it has been unceremoniously dropped from the Top 200 bracket. Poor show all round.
It’s a situation that should have invited soul-searching but not for university administrators at UM. UM vice-chancellor Hashim Yaacob instead made a boast of its Top 200 placing in a farcical display during a press interview. He was quoted in a local daily that although UM may have slipped in its ranking, it nevertheless is better than some 30,000 major institutions around the world, having made it to the Top 200! En. Hashim expressed “great happiness” that it even did better than last year (!) since UM made it to the top 100 in three sectors. That’s an educator speaking here. What’s more appalling, billboards (see pix) celebrating UM’s ‘achievements’ have appeared in the face of public criticism and even agitation for the smug vice-chancellor’s removal. There’s something comical about the whole business, but few people are laughing.
Across the causeway, Singapore’s national university took a tumble too, from 18 to 22nd place. That’s cause for a ruckus for anyone who has any sense of pride in their public institutions, although 4 places down is nothing compared to UM’s abysmal drop. Curiously, someone wrote to the Straits Times online wondering if the slip may be attributed to insufficient ‘branding.’ You know, wrong perception of strengths and leadership, etc. Now isn’t that something?
I don’t want to go into an “I-told-you-so” slanging match but what’s happened can only be a sort of vindication for homeschoolers. You won’t believe how many people have asked if by homeschooling, our two boys would be able to find a place in local universities. Do you think they will see the light now?
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