More on Jobless 70%

The Sun who reported on the "70% jobless grads" report (blogged here), followed up with a commentary yesterday. Despite not questioning the logic behind a the silly statistic, it raised some good points which I will quote here:

Unfortunately, the response given by Abu Bakar-that his ministry has established a retraining scheme and is providing feedback to the Higher Education and Education ministries-appears to be tired and unimaginative, much like an attempt to mend a burst mains with Band Aid. You just know that it's doomed to fail.

So, instead of cramming school leavers into universities that spring up overnight, we could start by taking them into skills development centres that can mould them into well-trained, technically sound workers who will form the economic backbone of a dynamic developing nation.

I've been curious about all these millions of ringgit spent on "retraining schemes" for our unemployed graduates. I mean, what's the point? If 3-4 years of tertiary education can't make one employable, how much can the "retraining schemes" do? If these schemes were indeed that useful and successful, we might as well have them as part of our university courses! Alternatively, if these "retraining schemes" are teaching these unemployed new industrial skills, then possibly these students shouldn't have been accepted into universities in the first place.

Hence the suggesting by The Sun to slow down the "cramming" of school leavers into universities is a valid one. This is to me, the primary cause of jobless graduates in this country.