Find out the root cause of unemployed Malay grads

Sin Chew Daily, Asia News Network, Selangor, Malaysia

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said among the unemployed graduates in Malaysia, 94 percent of them are Malays. This is quite shocking indeed. Two reasons were mentioned by Mahathir: There were many graduates who had pursued studies in non-vital fields, and a poor command of the English language.

Mahathir has had spoken on the subject before, but it showed once again how the Prime Minister is really concern over the matter for the younger Malay generations.

Apart from those few who have a genuine love for literature and religious studies, most of the Malays students opted for the two subjects because they are more easy going than the sciences, but job prospect for arts and religious studies are limited to civil servants and religious knowledge teachers. The government absorbed many of these students previously hence we did not have much about the problem with graduates in these two fields before.

Privatization has somewhat changed the situation. The private companies have to stay competitive in the highly demanding business world, and many Malay graduates found themselves unable to cope with in the private sector due to a lack of mastery of English language and the course they studied in university.

The discussion of unemployed Malay graduates may lead into the education system. The government has lavishly afforded help to the Malay students, but their school performance was disappointing. A survey taken by Penang Science University in March showed the differences of school results across the board between Malays students and students of other ethnic groups. Of the thirty top students who obtained state government loans, twenty nine of them were Chinese, one Indian. Due to poor school results no Malay student was granted the loan.

The Bumiputra students are not inferior even by their poor school results, rather they have been entitled to various privileges under the protective policy of the quota system. They could get into university without strong school results, and the government even reduced the standard of admission to fill up the quota allocated for Bumiputra students so much so that it lacks a uniform standard among the Malays students in the institutes of higher learning. On the other hand, places for non-Malay students are limited, only the very top students stand a chance for admission, so naturally they learned to treasure whatever opportunity that is available.

For all practically purpose, the local universities should upgrade and place greater emphasis on the English language, or to make English language the medium of instruction for certain courses. Currently, English language remains a very important international language use. Only by a greater mastery of the English language would our people be able to interact with the world, and keeping in touch with the latest development in economic and trade or high technology.

Generally, the Malay students prefer to opt for the less competitive subjects such as arts and religious studies. Although the humanities do enjoy a definite role in a developing nation, but if that turned out to be the only preferred choice for a tertiary education to the extent of neglecting technical subjects, sciences and mastery of the English language, we might be unable to catch up with a globalised world in the 21st century.

There are non-Malays among the unemployed graduates; but they are accustomed to being master of their own destiny, exploring their own resources and resilience that have made them steel and velvet to adapt to whatever situation or job they find themselves.