Preview

Reasons for Unemployment Among Graduates

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
5082 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Reasons for Unemployment Among Graduates
ARE GRADUATES TO BE BLAMED? UNEMPLOYMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE GRADUATES IN MALAYSIA By Norshima Zainal Shah Dublin City University, Ireland ABSTRACT The primary aim of this paper is to identify future help which can contribute towards reducing the unemployment rate of graduates in Malaysia, especially those with Computer Science Degrees. It does so by gaining initial insights into this problem through two groups: graduates and employers. The data draws on why graduates are unemployed from their own perspective as well as employers’ expectations towards the new workforce. The study concludes with two striking observations. Firstly, the graduates themselves feel that they are to be blamed for being unemployed. In addition, the employers too feel similarly, so reinforcing graduates’ attitudes as one of the major reasons for graduates’ unemployment. BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH In February 2006, the Berita Harian, a local newspaper, reported that every year Malaysia produces 60,000 graduates. 20,217 jobless graduates registered themselves with the Ministry of Human Resources Malaysia in June 2006. Tables 1 and 2 show the high rate of unemployment among graduates according to universities and courses in Malaysia. Table 1: Unemployment among graduates according to universities University Unemployed % Universiti Teknologi Mara 3,278 16.2% Universiti Utara Malaysia 1,532 7.6% Private Universities & Colleges 1,217 6.0% Universiti Teknologi Malaysia 1,147 5.7% Universiti Kebangsaan 971 4.8% Malaysia Universiti Pertanian Malaysia 919 4.5% Other public universities 840 4.2% Universiti Malaya 531 2.6% Universiti Sains Malaysia 505 2.5% Universiti Malaysia Sabah 371 1.8% Universiti Islam Antarabangsa 358 1.8% Foreign Graduates 342 1.7% Universiti Malaysia Sarawak 174 0.9% Universiti Pendidikan Sultan 39 0.2%

Idris Others 7,993 39.5% Total 20,217 100.0% Table 2: Unemployment among Malaysian graduates according to courses Course/Subjects Unemployed % Computer Science 3,942 19.5%



References: ACNeilsen Research Services (2000). “Employer satisfaction With Graduate Skills”. Retrieved November 18 2007 from http://www.dest.gov.au/archive/highered/eippubs/EIP99-7/execsum99_7.htm Aken, A. and Michalisin, M.D. (2007). “The impact of skills gap on the recruitment of MIS graduates”. In Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR Conference on computer personnel research (St. Louis, Missouri, USA, April 19-21 2007). Asma, A. and Lim, L (2000). “Cultural dimensions of Anglos, Australians and Malaysians”, Malaysian Management Review, December, pp. 9-17. Bailey, J.L and Stefaniak, G. (2001). “Industry perceptions of knowledge, skills, and abilities needed by computer programmers”. In Proceedings of the 2001 ACM SIGCPR Conference on computer personnel research (San Diego, California, USA, 2001). Beard, D., Schweiger, D. and Surendran, K. (2007). “Incorporating soft skills into accounting and MIS curricula”. In Proceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGMIS CPR conference on computer personnel doctoral consortium and research conference: The global information technology workforce (St. Louis, Missouri, USA, 2007) Braid, M. (2000). “Why today’s graduates don’t make the grade”. Retrieved November 20 2007, from http://web.lexis-nexis.com/professional/ Chickering, A. (2006). Strengthening spirituality and civic engagement in higher education. Journal of College and Character, 8(1). Retrieved November 20 2007, from http://www.colleguevalues.org/pdfs/Chickering%2()remarks.pdf Department for education and employment (1998a) Higher education for the 21st century: response to the Dearing Report (London, Department for the Education and Employment). Dest (March 2002). “Employability skills for the future”.ACT,DEST. Retrieved May 18, 2007 from http://www.dest.gov.au/ty/publications/employability_skills/final_report.pdf Fernandez (2006). “Evaluating Computing Education Programs Against Real World Needs”. The Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, vol. 21, no. 4, April 2006, 259-265. (Co- author Phyllis Tedford) Fowler, Floyd J. (1995). “Improving survey questions: design and evaluation”. Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications Haywood, E. and Madden, J. (2000). “Computer Technology Students-what skills do they really need”. In Proceedings of the 2000 ACM SIGCSE ACM Australasian conference on computing education (Melbourne, Australia December 2000). Henwood, R . “Careers in Malaysia”. Retrieved May 2, 2007 from http://www.asia.hobsons.com/regional_outlook/careers_in_malaysia Hesketh, Antony J. (2000). “Recruiting an Elite? Employers’ perceptions of graduate education and training”. Journal of Education and Work, 13:3, 245271 Hillage , J. & Pollard, E. (1998). “Employability: developing a framework for policy analysis”. Retrieved November 21, 2007 from http://employment-studies.co.uk/summary.php?id=emplblty&style=print Horne S. E. (1980). “Behavioural Objectives in the Affective Domain”. British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 6 (2), 189-196 http://www.epu.jpm.my/New%20Folder/FAQstm.htm Kinnear, P.R and Gray, C.D. (2006). “SPSS 14 made simple”. New York: Psychology Press Lairio, M.and Pettinen, L. (2005). Students’ career concern: challenges facing guidance providers in higher education. International Journal for Educational and Vocational Guidance, Vol. 6(3), 143-157 McLaughlin, M. (1995). “Employability Skills Profile: What Are Employers Looking For”. Retrieved April 20, 2007 from http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/ 80/14/b3/2d.pdf McQuaid, Ronald W. and Lindsay, Colin. (2005). “The concept of employability”, Urban Studies, Vol.42 (2), 197-219 Owen-Smith, P. (2004). What is cognitive-affective learning? Journal of Cognitive Affective Learning 1(1), 11. Retrieved November 21, 2007 from https://www.jcal.emory.edu//viewarticle.php?id=31&layout=html Phang, S (2006). “Lack of English hinders Malaysia grads”. Retrieved June 7, 2007 from http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/06/bloomberg/sxmalay.php The New Straits Times Newspaper (2005). “60 000 Malaysian graduates unemployed”. November 10th. The New Straits Times Newspaper (2004). “Computimes”. February 26th. The Star Newspaper (2004). “Fong: Review the education system to meet job needs” April 10th. The Star Newspaper, (2006). “Fong : Jobless ICT grads took outdated courses”. -Retrieved April 2, 2007 from http://www.mohr.gov.my/mohr_isujuly06.php Van Fleet, D.D., and Peterson, T.O (2005). Increasing the value of Teaching in the Academic Marketplace: The Creation of a Peer-Review Infrastructure for Teaching.Academy of Management Learning and Education, Vol 4(4), 506-514. Vijan, P (2007). “Infosys Ready to offer jobs to 29 Malaysian graduates”. Retrieved July 30, 2007 from http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_business.php?id=269264 Yogeesvaran, K (2005). “Addressing Skills Gap: Malaysian Case Study”. Paper for the Regional Conference on Investment Climate and Competitiveness in East Asia.

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Reflective Practice

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages

    A short essay reflecting upon and analysing aspects of the graduate skills required by the participant’s current workplace and for future personal development.…

    • 1613 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Catherine had talked about the 8 skills of employability some of I had already heard of, such as ‘teamwork communication, problem solving, planning and organizing, and self-management’ (Chinnock 2012). However certain ones I hadn’t heard of, such as ‘long-life learning, initiate and enterprise and technology’, which came as a bit of a shock. I guess growing up in a generation where computer skills are almost a natural action I hadn’t put much thought about this skill I had obtained and how it could actually help me throughout my career. The Career development presentation also gave some key attributes to help me as a student prepare for graduating, and those were Aptitude, Attitude and Academic performance (Chinnock 2012). I found that in order to gain these skills; study, employment, volunteer/community work, work experience and extra-curricular activities could help (Chinnock 2012). To which I did some further research and found that USQ offered the Phoenix Award, which is an award given to those who had done extra-curricular, work experience…

    • 786 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Yorke, M. (2006). Employability in Higher Education: What it is — What it is not. York, Higher Education Academy.…

    • 1730 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Better Essays

    Brennan, J. and Little, B., (2010). Graduate competences and relationships with the labour market: the UK case. In: Development of Competencies in the World of Work and Education. Ljubljana, Slovenia: The Authors, 24-26.…

    • 1094 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Best Essays

    Academic skills are important to acquire in- order to obtain relevant skills required in a working environment. The purpose of this report is to detect and distinguish the relevance and importance of academic standards and skills that are mandatory to succeed within a University and how this links with employment skills.…

    • 2244 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Another problem that causes the increasing of unemployment rate of Malaysia is that there are so many new job seekers each and every year. Research shows that every year there are 600,000 new job seekers in Malaysia. This is when the frictional unemployment happens which people are in between jobs, entering and reentering the labor force. For example when people quit their jobs for a better position or higher wages or when fresh graduates are actively seeking for jobs. Even though these people are not working, but they are counted as part of the labor force…

    • 521 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Fitrisehara Kazilan Universiti Putra Malaysia Ramlah Hamzah Corresponding Author, Associate Professor, Faculty of Educational Studies Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM Serdang Selangor, Malaysia E-mail: ramlah@educ.upm.edu.my Tel: 603-89468136; Fax: 603-89468246 Ab. Rahim Bakar Universiti Putra Malaysia Abstract The purpose of this research is to investigate the level of employability skills among the students of a technical and vocational training institutions. There are about 436 final year students from the institution were chosen as a sample of this research. The data was collected by questionnaires which was adapted from Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). Descriptive analysis and inferences such as ANOVA, and t-test were used to analyzed the data. This finding showed that the majority of the respondents are male. Most of them pursuing education in Certificate of Skills in one of these five area of specializations: art and building, electric, electronics, automotive and mechanical. The finding indicated that the employability skills among students were average. The findings also shown that there was a significant difference between employability skills and area of specializations. There were significant difference between employability skills for basic skills and informational skills and gender. The study suggests that Technical and Vocational Educational Department should provide a curriculum which includes employment element skills which are needed by the employers. The institutions and the industry should also create a compact joint-venture for students need in order to produce higher quality workers.…

    • 3946 Words
    • 16 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Employability

    • 3204 Words
    • 13 Pages

    Employability is a person 's capability of gaining and maintaining employment. (Hillage and Pollard, 1998). Why people are not getting the desired employment what they deserve or what they expect from their degree. This is the major problem or question faced by the young graduates.…

    • 3204 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Educational Institutions such as the University of Cagayan Valley adheres to creating “employable” graduates. It focuses not only on providing theoretical concepts to its students but it also provides them opportunities to hone them…

    • 1369 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    soft skills

    • 508 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Soft skills( communication, time management, teamwork..ect) are introduced to complement University Malaysia Panha (UMP)students’ technical skills and knowledge. Generally, today’s job market demands more than just knowledge and skills. Beyond these job-specific technical skills, soft skills are nearly universally sought by employers. The challenge is to introduce a program which allows students to learn and capitalize their soft-skills competencies.…

    • 508 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    post secondry education

    • 565 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There is huge role of post-secondary education system in building career of students. “Well began is half done”, post-secondary programs available in universities and colleges offer students the whole theoretical as well as practical knowledge of education. Whichever career field students choose, these programs enhance the practical skills .Being a technological era, student must learn these skills to apply in future at their work place, which is considered as a pre requisites in most of organisation. These high quality publicly funded post-secondary education and skills training system prepare individual to succeed in the global economy. Canadian post-secondary education have always played an extreme role in ensuring students have the skills, knowledge and competencies they will need throughout their working lives.…

    • 565 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Employability in Asia

    • 21543 Words
    • 87 Pages

    Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Employability of graduates in Asia: an overview of case studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Graduate employability in Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Employability of graduates in Malaysia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Employability of graduates in the Philippines . . . .…

    • 21543 Words
    • 87 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the wake of what some people are calling “The Great Recession” unemployment rates among recent college graduates in the United States has reached its highest rate since the 1970s. According to a study done by Northwestern University and Drexel University in Conjunction with the Economic Policy Institute based on data collected by the Census Bureau’s Population Survey of the U.S. Department of Labor approximately 18.4% (more than half a million) of bachelor’s degree recipients reported unemployment. This shocking statistic can be credited to a variety of different factors including overcrowded job markets, seemingly unrealistic expectations from employers and our country enduring the aftermath of the aforementioned recession.…

    • 1077 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    career plan

    • 6873 Words
    • 28 Pages

    The world is moving very fast and the expectations to find satisfying employment requires that a plan of action has to be put in place as soon as possible.in this competitive business environment graduates are often challenged. Employers tend to look for special skills to recruit very energetic and self-motivated individuals.…

    • 6873 Words
    • 28 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Beside, Malaysia is also recognized as one of the fastest growing economies in the world. One of the success reasons is the ability of the higher educational institutions to provide career that relevant with the courses which help students to develop knowledge and skills needed in the workplace. This will increase the employability of the students when they graduate.…

    • 289 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays

Related Topics