It seems apparent that the government is now very concern about our university graduates not being industry ready. Why does this problem exist, and is this a common problem in other universities outside of Malaysia.
Well, lets just analyze the things they say about our students.
1) When they graduate, they find it hard to find a job because they are really not skilled in what the industry is doing.
I suppose this is acceptable, but its a chicken and egg problem. You really cannot expect someone who is fresh out of college to know everything about what the industry use or need, this kind of thinking is illogical. Let me illustrate how dubious this claims are, its as if that your son, who just graduated, can suddenly use Sun One technology to develop web applications that works with oracle server 10i complete with clustering capabilities. This is anologous to actually expect my son to write new paper articles just because he learned English in highschool and my daughter to be designing a Nike advertisement on the highway billboard on the way to KLIA just because she took some art classes. And what if the Sun Server changed to Sun Two Server and Oracle change to 11i. Worst, what if the industry suddenly stops using Oracle and use mysql. A good employee is an asset not only for the knowledge he has, but also his experience in planning, and solving problems. For the claims to be true, universities and academicians needs to be able to predict the future, and having capabilities far different from other human beings. They need to be born with somekind of X-mutation in their genes that can help them have premonition of the future.
What should be done is that active participation from the industry is necessary to increase our human capital. And its not a burden entirely on the universities. For a very long time we try very hard to make the industry feel easy to do business in Malaysia, so why not expect something in return from them. Training should be part of a company's long time goals. If they want good employees, they can train the employees themselves. Then they can expect lower turnover and higher return on investments.
2) Of course the common argument is that after giving training to the students, this newly appointed employees leaves to a different company.
Naturally, one would always go to greener pastures. If a worker finds that he is worth much more in another company like Shell, he will obviously leave his current job in search for a better salary. This is just the natural order of things. And companies in Malaysia must understand that they have to entertain their employees needs as well, and that they are hiring professionals, and not slaves.
Well, maybe its about time that companies in Malaysia should be embracing Islamic values for a change, which a lot of foreign companies have already done so to retain employees or to attain skilled workers. Profit sharing should be incorporated into their job offer package. Some foreign companies that does this are offering stock options, profit sharing and packages that seems to be more Islamic when it comes to sharing profit. It's a way for them to show the employees that their employees mean a lot to them and if they work hard, the whole company gets rewarded. This values are Islamic in nature and far from the archaic views of maximizing profits which was commonly practiced in the west. It also creates loyalty amongst employee and does decrease turnover of employees.
But do they do this? No, not even giants like Telekom, TNB, DRB-Hicom or Proton? Why? Most of these companies have muslim bosses, and kiss ass to our PM who promotes Islam Hadari. But I guess, its just for the sake of their own well being and not for the ummah. They might just help promote that Islam Ada-hari.
3) Pay peanuts you get monkeys.
Some smarter people says that, "the education sector should be training them so that students today have enough fundamental knowledge to learn advanced concepts later when they start working faster. So when students today enters the industry, they can get up to speed with any technology really fast.
But look at the people who are teaching them in the first place. They don't get paid as much as the industry and research funding, is very low. So you find educators doing network marketing to earn extra income. You'll never see a Dr. or a graduate student working in the lab trying to solve complex theories, cause they rather be outside making a few extra bucks at night to pay off their car loans and housing loans. And they try very hard to become part-time lecturers at other institutions to gain some extra cash here and there. They monkey around in their job and provide substandard commitment. But what can you expect, you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
4) Internship programs can solve the problem.
Yes, internship programs can really solve the problem. But why aren't companies taking alot of intership students. In fact, this is what the government should encourage and even provide incentives to companies that take internship students. The government can reward companies who takes this responsibility to increase Malaysia's human capital by giving them tax deductable and other renumeration packages. Instead, we are sending off our students to work and gain internship experience in India, a company like Infosys. No doubt its a good plan, but we have our own companies here in Malaysia too. Why does it take a foreign company to provide such programs to our students. What happen to our own big national companies?
5) Malaysian research
Research increases the embodiment of knowledge. Speaking of which, our students, graduate students and our teaching force (Dr's and lecturers) are not given full support to do research. Hence, even if we had good students, capable to create new innovation, he will never win a noble price. At least not coming from our local university. Although the research funds are there, but they are not enough. Plus, a research culture awareness have to be inculcated in all of the universities. Without it, we will never be proud of our people, cause we have not contribute anything towards the embodiment of knowledge in our generation.
Disclaimer: The above are just ramblings that should not be taken out of context. I'm just rambling about what I think, and it should not be wrong to have ideas of your own. And my ramblings are copyrighted, and don't expect people to quote me without my permission.
This is a good article. I agree with you.
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