70% Jobless or Not?

In probably the last post on this issue for now, till we receive further clarification from the Ministry of Human Resources, I must say that The Sun wasn't "technically" wrong (as I claimed in the previous post on this issue) in reporting that "[s]ome 70% of public universities and institutes of higher learning graduates in the country are unemployed."

Thanks to a reader who posted the link to the Hansard (I wasn't aware that the online Hansard gets updated that fast!), I must say that it was indeed the Minister who provided the catastrophic statistic on our public institutions of higher learning.

The following is the transcript from the Hansard in which Datuk Abdul Rahman bin Bakar replied to Sdr Lim Kit Siang's query:

Tuan Lim Kit Siang [Ipoh Timur]: Tuan Yang di-Pertua, daripada jawapan Yang Berhormat Timbalan Menteri menunjukkan bahawa masalah siswazah yang menganggur lebih serius bila dibandingkan dengan IPTS dan sesetengah IPTA. Dan lebih serius lagi apabila dibandingkan dengan IPT luar negara dan sehingga sekarang kita boleh tengok dalam iklan-iklan IPTS-IPTS satu ciri penarikan ialah bahawa mereka menawarkan kursus-kursus supaya ada employable graduates, sehingga ini masalah bahawa kita ada universiti-universiti yang mengeluarkan unemployable graduates. Bukankah ini perlu satu perubahan yang institutional mengenai kualiti dalam universiti-universiti tempatan kita.

Datuk Abdul Rahman bin Bakar: Memang pihak kita menyedari bahawa pengangguran di kalangan IPTA dan IPTS berbeza. Sebagai contohnya, pengangguran di kalangan IPTA dalam lingkungan 70% di mana IPTS di dalam lingkungan 26% dan pengangguran daripada luar negara berkisar dalam 34%. Employable graduates ini memang suatu usaha yang telah dimulakan semenjak lama tetapi disusun kembali dengan harapan dan hasrat supaya graduan yang khususnya keluar dari IPTA memperoleh pekerjaan.

Dan yang jelas berlaku kini iaitu keluaran daripada IPTA kebanyakannya tidak dapat memenuhi peluang-peluang pekerjaan bukan berdasarkan kepada subjek ataupun kursus yang diperolehi sahaja tetapi ia juga berkaitan dengan soft skill seperti keterampilan, kebolehan, kewibawaan, penguasaan bahasa dan seumpamanya. Kementerian menyedari perkara ini sebab itulah kita menjalankan pelbagai skim latihan termasuk Skim Latihan Graduan dan keduanya kita juga memberikan pengesyoran serta pandangan-pandangan kepada Kementerian Pelajaran dan juga Kementerian Pengajian Tinggi supaya meletakkan kursus-kursus yang bersesuaian dan juga yang dituntut ataupun yang diminta oleh pasaran. Terima kasih.

So there you go - the Ministry of Human Resources has indeed claimed that about 70% of graduates from our public institutions of higher learning is unemployed. I seriously doubt that the statistic is correct - which led me to the clarification posted earlier that maybe Datuk Abdul Rahman bin Bakar was referring to 70% of the unemployed graduates registered with the Ministry were from public institutions of higher learning, while 26% were from private institutions. But then again, he has also added that the unemployment rate of foreign graduates was 34%. So it doesn't fully add up based on my "revised" inference.

But why have I spend 4 posts over this "simple" issue trying to figure out what our Deputy Minister has claimed? Shouldn't a representative from the Ministry of Higher Education stand up and challenge the statistics from their counterparts at the Ministry of Human Resources for giving such a damning picture of our public institutions of higher learning? After all, given that our country's unemployment rate is well below 10%, it would mean that it is way way easier to gain employment if one did not possess a tertiary education from public, private and overseas universities and colleges, than if one were to be a graduate.

Maybe our Deputy Minister of Human Resources should be referred to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee for misleading the Parliament via the new Standing Order 36(12)? ;-)