Unemployment among graduates is a serious problem in Malaysia. Unemployment describes the state of a worker who is able and willing to take work but cannot find it. A high unemployment rate generally indicates an economy in recession with few job opportunities. In Malaysia, today situation is different compare to twenty years ago as there is increase of competitiveness and volatility in labor market. Graduates not only need to compete among themselves, but also with other less educated candidate with years of work experiences. We can predict that fresh graduate’s chance of employment will become smaller. In my opinion, there are three causes of unemployment among graduate students which contribute to increase number of unemployment.
The significant cause of unemployed graduates is the quality of education. This is because the knowledge acquired in higher education by students does not quite meet the expectations of the organisation or company. The education system provided now is not relevant to the current scenario as it failed to produce quality graduate’s who are self-employed and productive. Besides, they depend on government to find for them some jobs. Graduates should know that academic achievement has little to do with how well they can perform in working world. This can be prove during the interview which most company reject first class graduate, and hired a second class student instead. Most of company also prefer to employ graduates with experience in work although they do not have good academic achievement. These show that the learning environment in higher education does not persuade the development of a student to become attractive and self-confident.
The second reason is due to lack of skills and experiences among the university graduates.
Most of graduates lack of several important skills, such as proficiency in English, lack of ICT proficiency and interpersonal skills. We can see there is a skill gap