Where The Local Higher Education System Has Failed in Malaysia

Recent interviews by national news agency with workforce solutions companies and human resource practitioners in Malaysia found that graduates emerging from then Malaysia education system are failing to meet the expectations of prospective employers.

 

According to the article, which was published early last month by national and local dailies, prospective employers have found that graduates from local public universities simply cannot communicate and are also sorely lacking in critical thinking skills.

According to the article, this has resulted in 60 per cent of graduates from Malaysian universities taking as long as six months after graduation to find jobs and the other 40 per cent taking even longer than that.

 

The article also revealed that Malaysian-based education, human resource and recruitment consultants feel there is need for critical thinking to be incorporated into the education system to prepare future generations for employment market.

Having experienced interviewing potential employees for a years, we cannot just see but to agree with the article. We also finds graduates from local universities sorely lacking in basic communication skills and the ability to 'sell 'themselves.--crucial requirements in working environments that are becoming increasingly global and competitive.

Often they are able to only regurgitate the work  and results that they have carried out and obtained for their final year thesis. Many will just end up staring at you blankly the minute you ask them something outside their area of the study.

They are also unable to respond to simple questions that require a minimum level of critical thinking such as "Why should we hire you?" or " Are you simply looking for a job, are you looking to build a career?".

Sadly, among these, are graduates from local universities whose transcripts reveal that they are high scorers and have even gotten themselves on the Dean's List. There are also a large number who come in to interviews unprepared and portray themselves as sorely lacking in commitment towards building careers. 

 

The article revealed that one reason for the lack of confidence evident in young graduates is that educational institutions are not placing enough focus on equipping undergraduates with skills that enable them to think outside the box and adapt to the demands of the working world.

Personally, we feels that there is also a need to address the quality of our academic staff in public universities.

 

Today, there are 20 public universities in Malaysia, some established as recently as 2005. This means more opportunities for higher education. But are the universities producing just quantity rather than quality?.  We are not against the proposed new of public universities but please don't just focus to uplift the name of universities by producing more graduates but please without compromising the future of jobs placements like before. It will be the disguise of unfair circumstance for the younger generations. If we were given a chance to critics we would even dare to slams the education ministry to have setting up more universities when compromising more graduates but without providing enough jobs placement  and using our billions ringgit to given scholarship to produce more graduates when without quality and fare to say affordable education rather than disguise in education mask.

 

We dare to say that many of these newer universities have inexperienced academic staff who are themselves struggling to publish their own work and research. Many of them have never been out of the university environment and lack real industrial experience. In fact on Sunday, 3rd April 2012, Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin as Education Minister says our education system is still one of the best by just quoting nation's intellectual and human capital capabilities towards becoming a high-income nation by 2020  and wise to say there are more graduate "cleaner" and producing more intelligent crimes!

A friend who pursued her postgraduate studies at a local public university can attest to this. She and her course mates have worked in the 'real' world for quite a number of years, during which they have been implementing and dealing with management policies and what they call 'real management and people issues'.

 

However during the course, they came across lecturers who stubbornly stuck to theories in reference books and journals, and refused to think out of the box and have open discussions on the real situations that the postgraduate students had experienced and were experiencing. 

 

A few lecturers, she said, also ended up feeling slighted when these working postgraduate students brought up real scenarios for discussion and arguments on textbook theories. Very unprofessional!

They later found that these lecturers were products of government scholarship, and despite having obtained postgraduate degrees overseas, have never been out of a university environment.

They confine themselves to their lecturing task and publish works that were based on, and restricted to, textbooks, that would be eventually lead to the results that they desired(again, based on, and confined to textbooks). 

 

The fiend also pointed out that despite having studied overseas, some of these lecturers were still "macam katak di bawah tempurung" and they themselves had problems communicating proficiently!

This goes to say a lot about why our public universities are churning out local graduates who are way below par.

 

Human resource experts will support our argument that textbooks can only provide basic guidelines for a certain field of study and will never actually help young graduates(and lecturers) face the challenges of the actual working world that includes the complexities of changing trends, environments and behaviors.

 

Hence, universities need to act fast in inculcating the attitude of being proactive and globally aware among their own academic staff and students. Not everything can taught from books.

Comments can reach the writer using this page.