Monday, November 07, 2005

Why can't local grads can't get hired (The Bear Cave Edition)

Woke up this afternoon and the first thing I do was read the newspapers (The Star). A glance at the headlines I am pissed. As usual they are blaming parents and grads on the local grads unemployment rate. Look, as much as the parents and the grads are to blame, the government should also share the blame.

Why can't grads get a job? Why can't higher education ensure grads a job? At the rate our government are giving University status to colleges, I can see why most of the companies out there do not trust the quality of education here. Not just that, you can see private colleges those with a size of a shophouse or smaller that is tied to some foreign university that is unheard of are beginning to sprout out like mushrooms after the rain. There is no control over the amount of private colleges in this country. At this rate, sooner or later we are going to become another India. Everyone you see on the streets are degree holders.

Another reason why companies refuses to employ local grads is simple, the quality of our Univeristies (especially public ones) are declining. Just look at UM. They drop 80 places in just one year and still they are celebrating as if they got number 1 and they seem that everything is ok. When you drop so many places in just one year the first thing you do is ADMIT your mistakes and learn from it. If I am the boss of some company (be it a small one) do you think I will employ grads from UM?

The last reason I am going to stress about is ENGLISH. Unless we have a market as big as China or have kickass technologies that can rival the Japanese, English is very important. Whether our UMNO politicians like it or not, when we get into the job market (private sector) the only chance we can use BM is when ordering food from mamak stalls or dealing with incompetent government workers. The government especially the stubborn Pemuda UMNO politians should wake up from their "blind nationalism" and start encouraging Malaysians to start learning English. They should as well stress the importance of English instead of avoiding it like the plague.

So there you have it, my second rant on this whole local grads unemployment thingy. Here's the link to my first one.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Everyone IS a degree holder. So you've got to have more to make you stand out from the crowd. And that, frankly, cannot be taught.

The report is true to a certain extent.

Fresh graduates expect fancy-smacy jobs with MNCs and salaries going around the 2.5 to 3K mark - that's just the scratch on the surface.

The biggest problem is when interviewers ask them questions like "Where do you see yourself in the next five to ten years?" (and much more) they can't answer it (no foresight, no planning for oneself). Everything is in the now for a lot of young people.

Education is one thing, building character is another.

If there are a lot of job opportunities out there to explore as you say they are, that what is holding these young people back? It is because 1) our parents want the traditional way out for our kiddies - don't blame them when the liberal arts division is being portrayed in a bad light (I mean would you want your kid to be a director when you look around you and the movie industry isn't even making waves at home?), and 2) our kids just want jobs that make them look good - no work but loads of money.

Everyone is at fault here but most of the blame, sorry to say, lies with the graduate and their families for not making the right decision and not 'educating' themselves 'the right way'.

We shouldn't depend on other people for our livelihood. That is just so wrong. Here we talk of building a more developed, independent nation and there you speak of how the government should do more to help unemployed graduates. Where will it end - the dependency on handouts?

You want to eat, you work for it man. Stop relying on handouts by the government at the expense of taxpayers like myself.

I was a local grad in mass communication from a crazily expensive and not-so-good private college. I was borned from an education system that prides itself on BM. I worked several part-time jobs during my studying years and was employed for 2.2K three years ago as a content writer just barely two weeks after I finished my last class. Fast forward to a couple of years later, I'm now with an MNC, earning a comfortable living so to speak. My job wasn't handed to me on a silver platter. I worked hard for it.

Times have changed. So must are our graduates mindset.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Mei...totally. And if i can't get a job when i grat, i woouldn't be saying its the government or the uni. I would be saying stuff like "Should have learnt this n this before I grad"...and maybe i should. Imagine my friend who is 16 already earning as much as a fresh grad in design companies!! Well if I can't get a job at Intel or Infinion, I don't mind do sales and study extra stuff so I have better prospects for better jobs in the future.

Justin Tan said...

Nah, i didn't blame the government 100% for the unemployment rates. I did say that the government should share the blame along with the grads themselves.

I just want to tell the other side of the story instead. True, parents and grads are to blame but they should not take all of the blame.