Graduate unemployment, by comparison, stood at just 3.2% in 2024. Williams said graduate employability should not be treated as a measure of university success.
PETALING JAYA: Nearly two million graduates are trapped in jobs below their qualification level, a far more damning measure of higher education outcomes than unemployment figures, economist and former university provost Geoffrey Williams said.
Williams said the biggest issue facing graduates was underemployment as they leave universities burdened with debt and accept whatever work is available, regardless of whether it matches their qualifications.
READ MORE: New bar course to replace CLP exam with practical focus
“Unemployment is low, but underemployment is high. This is the measure to watch. Almost two million are in this category, more than one third of all graduates,“ he told theSun.
Data from the Department of Statistics Malaysia showed that 1.96 million tertiaryeducated Malaysians were in skill-related underemployment in the third quarter of last year, making up 35.5% of employed degree and diploma holders.
Graduate unemployment, by comparison, stood at just 3.2% in 2024. Williams said graduate employability should not be treated as a measure of university success.
“Graduate employability is not a good measure of university success because if businesses do not supply graduate-level jobs, universities cannot do anything about that.”
He rejected the notion that universities should primarily function as workforce training centres, even as industry associations continue to highlight the gap between academic output and labour market needs.
“The fact is that universities are not training centres – they are not set up to train graduates for the labour force. Most academics have never worked outside of a university and do not know what employers want.”
Williams said traditional employability measures fail to capture whether graduates are actually securing graduate-level positions.
“Traditional employability statistics are already irrelevant because they do not show that graduates have graduate-level jobs.
“One big mismatch for universities is that they prepare graduates for formal contracts that do not exist in large enough numbers.”
Citing Higher Education Ministry tracer studies, he added that about 90% of graduates worked for employers while only 10% became entrepreneurs – a ratio he said was poorly suited to the realities of the modern economy.
“In a world of artificial intelligence, gig economy and micro-enterprises, employment will be more informal. Worldclass universities are preparing people for that and Malaysian universities need to catch up.”
Williams also said the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) played an important role in maintaining quality across the sector.
He said without the agency’s oversight, standards in higher education would deteriorate. On June 14, MQA chief executive Prof Datuk Dr Mohammad Shatar Sabran said Malaysian higher education met international standards and dismissed claims that declining standards were behind graduate employment difficulties.
He also said strong academic results alone were no longer sufficient and graduates must equip themselves with additional skills to remain competitive.
