THE EMPLOYABILITY SKILLS OF MALAYSIAN UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Unemployment among Malaysian graduates is not a new phenomenon. In 2010, about 30,000 graduates were not able to be employed within six (6) months upon their graduations. The Star in 2010 had reported that five reasons why graduates not to be employed are due to lack of industrial training, poor English, lack of problem-solving skills, job-hopping and lack of confidence. Taking a cue from this, the Malaysian government had initiated due to efforts to deal with this impediment. To a certain extent, a drastic step had been projected to enhance the English language efficiency and ICT considering lack of skill of our graduates in these two areas. Unfortunately, retraining graduate programs/plans have indeed triggered dismal results and incurred a tremendous cost. Much worse, the Malaysian economy is not booming but expected to perform at a mediocre of 4.6% to 5% from 2011 to 2020. In pursuant to this, it is doubtful that there will be a sufficient number of jobs available for those graduates or whether they have the credibility to compete for jobs that are offered in the private sector. Hence, the purpose of this research is to assess the employability skills of students in Higher Education Institutions in Malaysia in order to measure their work readiness. A total of 300 university graduates from various public and private universities participated in this study. The study found 12 skills that the university students deem as to be very important whereby disciplined to top the list. Furthermore, there is a significant association between graduates’ skills and genders such as organization skills, problem-solving, teamwork, and good time management. There is also a significant association between respondents’ skills and institutions such as problem-solving skills.