Trend - Careers

Jobless Graduates,
Will It Spread?
Singapore ruses to produce graduates, will it lead to an excess?
June 17, 2001

Singapore has gone a full circle.

In 1965, finding jobs was the Singapore's most pressing problem; today - 36 years later - it is still the biggest single factor that will decide people's lives.

It will always be.

Singapore's middle class prosperity is due to the two-income family, with most married partners having tertiary skills.

Today more than 60 per cent of about 45,000 youths who finish "A" and "O" levels emerge with a degree or diploma. In about five years' time, it will hit 80 per cent.

The outcome is a rising fear that it will lead to a perpetual state of unemployed graduates, where Bachelor of Arts degree-holders will man hotel reception desks or manage a fast-food outlet.

Or just as bad, a vast reduction of graduate pay across the board, in other words, with so many graduates, the degree will be devalued.

During the 1987 recession, I remember a fresh accountant graduate reporting that after almost a year of unsuccessful applications, he was overjoyed to get a job. It was shortlived, he cried. The boss had offered S$600 a month.Feeling insulted and angry, he wrote to the press.

While a crisis-hit Asia is - in general - cutting down on its education budget, Singapore is increasing its spending by billions of dollars more over the next few years to educate its people or lure in skilled foreigners.

They include starting a fourth university, pushing up the number of undergraduates - from 9,500 to 15,000 - in two years and revamping its education system (adopting USA's open method) to encourage research and creativity.

What is happening in Singapore is a modern renaissance of learning of sorts rarely seen in Asian history.

One by one, seven of the world's finest institutions are establishing a powerful presence in the Republic which will boost the city's level of education and research.

Its ambition is to be Asia's best in 10 years, a version of Harvard and Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT.)

Why the urgency? Well, Singapore sees its future depending on it.

Forced by competition and a high tech global revolution, Singapore needs to move to a higher skill economy - NOW. Its leaders speak of fears of being overwhelmed by fast growing China.

What it can't train on time, it imports.

All this is fine, but will it lead one day result in a perpetual state of unemployed graduates like in many other countries?

Mauritius, for example, had a manpower department whose job was to register professionals, including doctors and nurses, for overseas jobs.

In Egypt, there were so many graduates that the late President Anwar Sadat signed a decree to give jobs to every fresh graduate at a minimum salary (US$80 a month then.)

Adding to the fear is the deteriorating employment prospects for graduates this year. As a result of the economic downturn, companies are stopping or cutting down recruiting programmes.

In recent months, salaries for the skilled have also come down 10 to 15 per cent across the board. Fresh graduates say they have to wait a longer time before they find a job.

Among 237 companies recently surveyed, some 56 per cent say they have stopped recruitment altogether. Almost 20 per cent have implemented a wage freeze.Others are introducing multi-tasking (more tasks per worker) and 26 firms say they have started retrenching.

These are, however, passing clouds like in 1987. (In fact, some cynics say this is the government's scaring tactics before an election.)

In many previous years Singapore had been rationing the number of graduates in, for example, law and medicine, to prevent an excess. But with a global economy, it has relaxed the control. The explaination was: Singaporean companies are spreading regional.

Seen from a broader, long-term perspective, the government says there is a shortage, rather than a surplus, of graduates with "hard" degrees. This squeeze is likely to continue for the next 5 years.

New investment in telecommunications will produce 5,000 jobs by the end of the year. Another strong prospect is life sciences.

And despite the NASDAQ collapse, IT-related jobs are still very much in demand. Singapore is desperately short of IT workers. It needs 10,000 new ones and its universities are meeting only 25 per cent of the demand.It is recruiting them from Vietnam to China, from India to Malaysia.

But it is not always successful with higher-end specialists.

Recently a headhunter cast the net in Singapore (and Hong Kong and Malaysia) for an IT specialist for the final stage of development of a business software.

"We wanted a combination of IT, packaging and marketing skills - we found none," he said.

Over the long term, the shortage of trained people exists in the developed Asian cities, including Hong Kong and Taiwan.

The less-developed economies, too, suffer from it but it is due largely to a brain drain.

The bottom-line answer - Avoid a general degree if you don't want to be a new unemployed, or lowly employed, graduate.

Stick to the "hard" studies like engineering, information technology, medicine, law, medical research, finance, ectc and the future is likely to be smooth.

Even if the storm breaks and jobs become scarce in Singapore, one can seek temporary shelter abroad.

Seah Chiang Nee