Snapshot on the Career and Employability of Islamic Studies Graduates in Malaysia

Abstract

There are many challenges faced by the graduates of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in getting themselves employed. One of which is the lack of soft skills which is directly related to employability. Thus improving the soft skills means increasing the graduate’s opportunity to be employed. As such, employability of HEI graduates is one of the key agendas of the Ministry of Education (MOE). The objective of this paper is two prongs. First, is to highlight the scenario of Islamic Studies Graduates (ISGs) career and employability status after they have graduated from the Public Universities (PUs). The second, is to identify the elements of soft skills of these graduates who are employed in industry unrelated to their academic qualification. The first objective is achieved by obtaining data of both job career and employability rate of five PUs that offered Islamic Studies Programmes (ISPs). The data obtained from Univerisity Sains Islam Malaysia’s (USIM’s) career unit and Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin’s (UniSZA’s) alumini were collected and analyzed descriptively. The second objective is achieved by interviewing the personnel of the organizations who employ these graduates. The data of the interviews will be transcribed and analyzed qualitatively by using Atlas. The first objective is achieved through two parts of the finding. The first part revealed that 40% of USIM’s ISGs are employed in the professional and educational job. The other part of the finding interestingly revealed that out of five ISPs offered by PUs, UniSZA’s two ISPs which Degree in Education (Islamic Studies) and Degree in Education (Primary Studies) achieved a 100% employability for two consecutive years, 2015 and 2016. This finding concur with study conducted by Aini, Azizi and Yahya (2002); Fasan, Marcon, (2018). Besides the existing elements of soft skills crafted by the MOE, the finding of second objective is expected to reveal new emerging themes of ISGs soft skills. These themes are the elements that will form the structure of soft skills of the ISGs for PUs in Malaysia. It is expected that these soft skills would provide profound insight to researchers and educators alike what specific soft skills that ISG should have or acquire before they graduate from HEIs, especially in the PUs. Thus, it is envisaged that the new structure of soft skills could perhaps be a guiding principles during the process of relooking and redesigning the current curriculum for ISPs offered at the Malaysian HEIs.