Towards Zero Graduate Unemployment
OF all the metrics used to rate a Higher Education Institution (HEI), graduate employability (GE) is the bottom line measure of a HEI’s impact on a nation. While benchmarking tools such as world university ranking may be essential to gauge an institution’s global standing, HEIs should be ever prepared to respond to parent’s bottom line question — is this programme going to land my child a job?
Some of the issues of Graduate Unemployment might not seem as it is. This can be explained in the Four Rarely-Told Stories. The first is: Zero Graduate Unemployment is a modest proposition. Prof. Muhammad Yunus shared his experience of working towards zero unemployment to liberate the poor people, and his success to achieve zero unemployment for the poor, signing that emulating his feat upon graduates should be a walk-inthe park.
Second, the skills gap is a halftruth. Matthew Yglesias summarised the findings of a paper by Alicia Sasser Modestino, Daniel Shoag, and Joshua Balance that showed employers reacted to high unemployment by tightening job descriptions. When unemployment rates started to drop thanks to economic recovery, employers became more lenient.
Thirdly, over a century of revolution proved that technology has created more jobs than it has eliminated. Contrary to widespread concern that machines are threatening future jobs, findings by Deloitte economists revealed that technology has created significantly more jobs than eliminating them.
Fourth, graduates assume that “unemployed” means untraceable. Tracer study surveys by HEIs have made filling the survey as condition for graduates to attend convocation ceremonies. Thus the output is yet questionable as some graduates choose not to work before convocation.
UTM: Hi-5F for Graduate Employability
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) has set its sights on a target of 95 per cent graduate employability (GE) by the year 2020. As of Feb 29, its achievement is at 95.15 per cent. Thirteen of our academic programmes achieved 100 per cent GE with numerous graduates hired locally and abroad.
In UTM, we focus on the top 5 HE fundamentals, or “Hi-5F” (High Five Factors).
The first is to drive UTM’s mission of prospering lives. UTM established the Institute for Life-Ready Graduates (UTM iLeaGue) aimed at developing holistic talents who embody wisdom, humanity and entrepreneurial qualities in line with UTM graduate attributes, UTM core values and the National Education Philosophy.
The Hi-5F2 is creating a Flexible, Future-Ready Curriculum including key shifts towards a curriculum that is work/career-based, flexible and 4IR-ready. It is designed to produce marketable, recession-proof, and ultimately, life-ready graduates who can rise above 21st centur y challenges. The UTM-Industry Innovation Exchange project includes up to 50 per cent workbased learning elements in close collaboration with over 2,000 UTM industrial collaborators to enable students to be inclusively involved in real-life problem solving that benefits industry and community.
Next is Future-Ready Educators. In nurturing life-ready graduates, UTM hires and trains educators to be technically-competent mentors who are drivers of change and motivators of student-centred learning; apart from being experienced researchers and certified practitioners.
In support of the curriculum, UTM ensures to have efficient, tech-driven product and programme delivery as its Hi-5F4, to widening access to quality education in line with Transnational Education. Educators are trained to embrace the new norm of delivering quality education through flexible and “4A” ubiquitous learning (technologyenabled learning Anything by Anyone, from Anywhere at Anytime).
The last Hi-5F is the Eco-System of Inclusive Continuous Quality Improvement through Research on Big-Data Analystics, Real-time Stakeholders Engagement and Rigorous Quality Assurance.
UTM collaborates with local and international stakeholders from industrial and academic experts, captains of industry, entrepreneurs and policy makers who are appointed as adjunct lecturers/professors, expert advisors, supervisors, assessors, evaluators and advisory council members.
Its curriculum receives continuous feedback from national and international experts and practitioners, and goes through rigorous quality assurance audits by national and international professional and accreditation bodies.