Graduate Unemployment; Life is not a Bunch of Roses

Title: Graduate Unemployment; Life is not a Bunch of Roses
Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when unemployment high, we had the same problem. My ex-uncle in law (he was married to my auntie) who worked at Pusat Islam told me a story that some government department were given a budget to employ these graduates, a salary of RM400 per month, a desk but nothing to do – a stereotype government job. Some of the more enterprising graduates opened burger stall and drink kiosk by the roadside. Graduate unemployment is not new. We read about it in the past year. Recent figure indicates that the number is around 80,000 and rising.
Blames on the root of this problem has been passed around like a soccer ball, from the tertiary institution for offering courses that is not needed in the marketplace to economist for predicting the wrong demand sector.
The economy has been in growth mode for some years now, unemployment at record low, and employers are recruiting foreign workers in their thousands. We might think that the current drive to repatriate illegal immigrants would open up jobs to locals, but it is more complicated than that. Tertiary graduates have higher expectations about jobs that they apply.
They avoid 3D criteria – DANGEROUS, DIRTY and DEMEANING (jobs that doesn’t bring prestige). By eliminating jobs that has these criteria; construction jobs, factory works and farm works, their choices become limited. Well this is just a generalisation; there are quite a number of graduates who would do anything given chance and good salary, good on them. A lot of it has to do with expectations, what society expect of them and their attitude towards hard work.
As a society, Malaysians still have remnants of feudal attitudes. We groom our children to think that certain jobs are beneath them. Even worse, we pressurise our children to achieve whatever our dream job that we couldn’t achieve ourselves e.g. sending our kids for ballet lessons or medical school – it doesn’t matter that the kid is not interested, he or she will get used to it. We always want them to aspire for better things in life – well, there is nothing wrong with that, but when thing doesn’t turn out as we plan, we should just get on with it. As they say in English, life is not a bunch of roses. Employers aggravate the situation by offering low, starvation rate wages and limiting their workers upward potential. Government and our elected representatives did their part in worsening the situation by letting employers exploit workers with impunity, suppressing union movements and opening a floodgate of immigrant workers from neighbouring countries to keep wages low.
If there is a problem called graduate unemployment, the problem lies in their attitude towards hard work and the types of job that they coveted.
Fact is, graduates are the best brains in the country, and they represent our best bet in our country’s competitiveness in the future. Let them do whatever jobs available, it does not matter if the job that they do has anything to do with their tertiary training. With their brains and talents, they can improvise, move t the top and be their best in their chosen field.