Graduates In Malaysia Research Articles

The Perceived Level of Importance of Competency Constructs for Future Graphic Design Graduates in Malaysia

The Perceived Level of Importance of Competency Constructs for Future Graphic Design Graduates in Malaysia

Use of lexical items in job interviews by recent graduates in Malaysia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the knowledge of lexical items in a job interview by recent graduates.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from one of the organisations in the Klang Valley, Malaysia. Twenty-seven recent graduates participated in the study. The structured standard interview questions were used to elicit the job interview data. The data were recorded and analysed qualitatively by using Allwood's (1999a, b, c) communicative behaviour theory.FindingsThe findings showed that the lexical items used by the interviewees varied and revealed their knowledge of lexical items in relation to these five characteristics: personality, skills, capability, experience and self-motivation. The successful interviewees reflected their knowledge of lexical items that indicated their confidence in in the job interviews. The lexical items used by the reserved interviewees were limited that displayed their personalities and reflected uncertainty and lack of confidence. The unsuccessful interviewees used limited lexical items and were vague and evasive in answering questions. This could also be not convincing enough to influence the outcome of the interviews positively.Practical implicationsThe findings of this study can assist policymakers such as officials of higher learning institutions to integrate interview workshops and mock interviews into their current curriculum as a form of preparation for undergraduates. These mock interviews can be more appropriate if experienced interviewers are utilised from the outsourcing organisations.Social implicationsIt creates an awareness for job applicants especially undergraduates after completing their studies that knowledge of lexical items are important in job interviews.Originality/valueThe use of appropriate lexical items play an important role in job interviews as they have shown that all the successful interviewees had used them to good effect in their interactions with the interviewer.

The Issue of Graduate Unemployment in Malaysia: Post Covid-19

This paper aims to examine the graduates’ plans if they remain unemployed for more than one year after graduation. This matter is essential as a higher unemployment rate is expected due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By conducting semi-structured interviews on ten graduates in one of the public universities in Melaka, Malaysia, it was found that the majority of the graduates plan to apply for works even if the works are meant for a lower level educational background. Besides, only a few of them plan to join the gig economy by learning new skills and upgrading themselves. This trend shows that fresh graduates in Malaysia are still having a high dependency on jobs offered by the public or private sector. Their proactiveness to self-learn and enhance their skills after graduation is still lacking. It gives a signal to the tertiary education providers to re-design their curriculum by instilling specific traits and personalities that can change the graduates’ mindset to be more proactive. Besides, the curriculum should include more hands-on courses related to the gig economy to ensure better graduate employability in the future.

The Malaysian Graduate Readiness to be Employed in IR 4.0

The Malaysian Graduate Readiness to be Employed in IR 4.0

The Malaysian Graduate Readiness to be Employed in IR 4.0

The Malaysian Graduate Readiness to be Employed in IR 4.0

A Model for Malaysian Work Value to Improve Level of Work Value among Malaysian Graduate

A Model for Malaysian Work Value to Improve Level of Work Value among Malaysian Graduate

A Model for Malaysian Work Value to Improve Level of Work Value among Malaysian Graduate

Work values are the beliefs and ideas that are related to one’s occupation. These values are eventually used as guiding principles in career choice. Previous research examined work values and its impact or some relevant constructs such as affective commitment, organizational identification and self-efficacy. However, those relationships haven’t been collectively integrated and empirically tested in a theoretical model, nor have they been empirically tested. Therefore, this study aims to assess the influence of Malaysian Work Value Model (MWVM) on cooperative communication, affective commitment, organizational identification and self-efficacy. Latent composite structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model. Finally, recommendations will be provided for the public and private universities to help them in developing their course learning outcome in order to enhance student’s work values and increase the employability rate.

Unemployment among Graduates - Is there a Mismatch?

Malaysian graduates have been challenged with issues of unemployment with an increasing trend in unemployment rates in the last few years. The increasing unemployment rate is a grave concern since this issue may decrease the image of the educational system in Malaysia and hence might lead to some companies losing their confidence in our local graduates. Hence, the root cause of this issue needs immediate attention. This paper examines the link between graduate attributes, employability skills, English proficiency, unrealistic salary and job mismatch on unemployment among graduates in Malaysia. Using a self-administered questionnaire, data was collected from 159 workers who had graduated from public universities in Shah Alam and experienced unemployment for at least six months from the date they completed their studies. Partial least squares method has been adopted using SmartPLS 3.0 software for analyzing the data. The findings revealed that employability skills, job mismatch and unrealistic salary were the main factors causing unemployment among graduates. To mitigate this issue, policy measures have to look at both micro level in terms of attitude of graduates as well as macro level at institutional factors such as courses provided by the universities.

Transnational education: Developing graduates in Malaysia for a globalized world

Transnational education: Developing graduates in Malaysia for a globalized world

Entrepreneurship Education: UnemploymentIses, People’s Well Being and Entrepreneurial Intentions among TVET Graduates in Malaysia

Entrepreneurship Education: UnemploymentIses, People’s Well Being and Entrepreneurial Intentions among TVET Graduates in Malaysia

A comparative Study on Graduates’ Employment in Malaysia by using Data Mining

This study implements data mining to extract knowledge by analysing the graduates’ employment dataset from year 2017 obtained from Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE). The objective of this study is to compare three predictive models which are Decision Tree (DT), Logistic Regression (LR) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). Besides, this study is also done to determine the best predictive model for predicting graduates’ employment sectors whether in public sector or private sectors. Every graduate student wishes to choose the right path in determining which sectors they are going to be entered, either to the public or private sectors. Usually, most graduates in Malaysia prefer the employment in the public sector rather than the private sector. Using data mining to discover the relationship and patterns can help in making a better decision. Prediction model is a must to determine the best performance when dealing with the large data set which helps the graduates to choose a sector based on the type of data or information that he/she furnishes. Based on the analysis, Artificial Neural Network (ANN 5) is the best model in predicting placement of employed graduates whether in public sector or private sector compared to the other models. ANN 5 is the highest accuracy at 81.52% and sensitivity at 65.67% while for the specificity of ANN 5 is 91.44%. The misclassification rate of ANN 5 is 18.48% which is the lowest compared to the other models. Overall, ANN 5 is the best model to predict negative target which is graduates employed in private sector since the value of specificity is higher than sensitivity. The result of this study can be used by government, universities and other responsible agencies in order to predict whether graduates will be employed in public or private sectors.

Job Mismatch and Overeducation among Graduates in Malaysia

The supply of young graduates entering Malaysia labour market due to the expansion in higher education undergone a sharp increase. A consequence of this is an increase in the number of individuals who are unemployed and doing jobs with low income and depressing job environment. In other words, they are doing jobs that do not commensurate to their level of educational qualifications or referred to as overeducation. By using a Job Analyst Method, which is one of the frequent methods used to measure overeducation and data from Graduate Tracer Study (GTS) published by the Ministry of Education Malaysia from 2012 - 2017, this paper provides a descriptive analysis on the extent of overeducation among graduates. The result highlights that the percentage of overeducated graduates keep on increasing, and the majority of them engaged in the labour market as clerks and sales workers.

The employability of international branch campus graduates: evidence from Malaysia

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the employability of international branch campus (IBC) students and graduates in Malaysia, including their possession of transnational skills and knowledge, and the role of IBC educational characteristics in improving such employability.Design/methodology/approachA combination of employer interviews (n=21) and a survey of Malaysian students (n=246) enrolled at four IBCs are used in this study. Thematic and matrix analyses were applied to the interviews and multivariate analysis to the survey responses.FindingsIBC graduates are well-equipped with the skills and attributes that employers find most important, in particular, soft skills and personal attributes. The development of these employability attributes is related to IBC educational characteristics and international exposure on campus – with important heterogeneity among IBCs and curricula. However, IBC education does not strongly improve the transnational human capital of Malaysian students and is only a partial substitute for education abroad in this respect.Originality/valueThis paper is one of the few studies that examine the employability of students that graduate from IBC universities, a type of education that has received only limited scholarly attention. It also broadens the scope of the debate on the relation between international experience and employability by examining whether receiving an IBC education in one’s home country can lead to the development of transnational human capital. Finally, it provides new insights on the returns to (higher) education by directly measuring students’ acquisition of skills and examining the role educational characteristics play in this.

University Education and Employment Challenges: An Evaluation of Fresh Accounting Graduates in Malaysia

University Education and Employment Challenges: An Evaluation of Fresh Accounting Graduates in Malaysia

Exploration of Spiritual Elements in Holistic-Entrepreneur (Holistic-E) among TVET Graduate Students

Entrepreneurship is seen as a potential career path for overcoming the problem of unemployment. However, this career has yet to get a second or even a last option among graduates in Malaysia. Government has introduced several initiatives to cultivate entrepreneurial spirit among students or graduates such as the first surge of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education) and Entrepreneurship Action Plan 2016-2020. Despite the magnitude of these efforts, little is known whether graduates today are entrepreneurial. Furthermore, based on current achievements, this is quite difficult to implement as the desire of graduates in entrepreneurship is not particularly encouraging, especially graduates in TVET courses. Compared to previous studies on student development that only examines the external element of the student affecting entrepreneurial desires, this study focuses on the internal elements of students holistically to increase student entrepreneurial desires and improve entrepreneurship as one of the preferred careers in Malaysia in meeting the challenges of the first shift of the Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025; produce more graduate entrepreneurs.

The Relationship between Intention and Actual Entrepreneurial as a Career Choice of Malaysian Graduate

Entrepreneurship has been recognized as a catalyst for the economic growth of a nation and is becoming an important field in Malaysia. Graduates’ involvement in entrepreneurial activities is encouraged and the Malaysian government has invested millions of Ringgit in support of this agenda to increase the intention of students to be entrepreneur. However, the statistics showed that, as of 2013, only 1.7 percent of graduates were self-employed, compared to the 5 percent aspired by the government. It is therefore imperative to study the relationship between the intention and actual choice to be graduate entrepreneur. Data analysis using logistics model were carried out with a sample of 2,300 graduates (including those pursuing entrepreneur degrees). Results indicate a significant positive relationship between the graduates’ intention to become entrepreneurs and their actual choice of being entrepreneurs. However, some of the intentions are not translated into actual choice. In choosing to become an entrepreneur, having the intention alone may not be enough but it is an important prerequisite. The graduate’s actual choice to be entrepreneur is triggered by intention. Although there is a probability for intention to not being translated into actual choice, entrepreneurial intention is required to ensure the actual choice of becoming an entrepreneur. In other words, in choosing to become an entrepreneur, having the intention alone may not be enough but it is definitely an important prerequisite.

Factors Influencing Employability of Chinese Graduates in Malaysia upon Returning to China

This study indicates important factors in related to Chinese international students who graduated from Malaysia have better ‘employability’ upon returning to China employment market. Total survey of 160 samples collected from the target group, the Chinese graduates who study in Malaysia and now working in China. The direct model result found that educational and learning activities (H1) and soft skills (H2) have a significant impact on graduate’s employability. Moreover, the findings also found the mediation role of graduate’s English proficiency scored at 0.1595 (H3) and 0.1293 (H4) between educational and learning activities, soft skills and employability. The findings enable education service providers and policy-makers identify more competitive variables in enhancing graduate employability in China market. Additionally, the result of this study also justified the important of English proficiency toward the employability of Chinese graduates in China.

Graduates’ Employability through the University Entrepreneurship Curriculum Implementation: The Malaysian Context

Unemployment among Malaysian graduates has become a grievous issue, which attracts serious debates at several intellectual forums, seminars, conferences and other intellectual platforms. The concerned parties are government, academics, non-governmental agencies, academics and others. The issue makes other countries to question the Malaysian educational system and extensively affects the Malaysia’s vision of becoming developed country in 2025 (Ekpe, 2017). Thus, Malaysian government has identified three measures that could help to tackle the problem of unemployment among graduates. One, reforming the curricula to ensure quality and training. This was highlighted by the Prime Minister in his Budget speech in 2013. Second, the recent implementation of “1 Malaysia Training Scheme (SLIM) in 2011. Third, reforming the higher education curricula to stimulate the students’ mind set towards entrepreneurship (Bin Yusuf, Zainol & Bin Ibrahim, 2015; Bustamam & Abdul Halit, 2016). Nevertheless, the recent statistics (December, 2012-January, 2013), portray high level of unemployment among the graduates at the rate of 2.4 percent; and relatively signifies that graduates in Malaysia do not participate much in SLIM (Shamsuddin & Mohamed Mahfol, 2013; Statistics Labour Force, 2013).

Discrete Time to Event with Random Effect Model Using Malaysian Graduate Employability Data

Discrete Time to Event with Random Effect Model Using Malaysian Graduate Employability Data

Discrete Time to Event with Random Effect Model Using Malaysian Graduate Employability Data

Discrete Time to Event with Random Effect Model Using Malaysian Graduate Employability Data