NOVEMBER 28 — About two million Malaysians are employed below their qualified station. According to the department of statistics earlier this month.

Underemployed, overeducated, disrespected or not given their worth. Various ways to call it. Whichever way referred to they constitute 37 per cent — more than a third — of the tertiary educated employed in the Malaysian economy.

Like the digital animation graduate working for a small print shop in Kluang, helping elderly aunts choose fonts for their daughters and sons’ kenduri invitation cards.

It’s soul-crushing to spend years trained in advanced animation software, termed promising by instructors, and then end up in the back of a sub-rented office unit in a derelict shop-lot block. Designing invites for Nornizran and Dayang’s wedding, while daydreaming about an alternate universe where this savant leads a team to produce Malaysia animation movie.

There is nothing to be ashamed about work, regardless of pay, title or advancement. Being employed is a world better than being unemployed.

Yet to feel underutilised or underpaid is not a feeling which goes away easily. A feeling shared by far too many in Malaysia currently.

To stay in class longer, only to earn less than earlier quitters because they clocked work years punches ambition in the gut. Apparently, a PhD is less valuable than five years on a work-floor.

Or the graduated museum curator moonlighting too long as a club bouncer. That the only art he has left is to tell fake IDs.

Every year the trained candidate is kept away from his career job, by the year, the training and qualification degrades, eventually to irrelevance.

Are there answers to this predicament?

It’s not local and it’s not going away

It’s important to recognise Malaysia is not the lone country with this affliction. All countries which successfully invest in public education, target more graduates and facilitate state loans end up with more outputs regardless of whether the economy grows parallelly to absorb them.

The United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics reported 31 per cent of employees were overeducated for their jobs in 2017, swerving up from 20 per cent in 1992. It’s only likely the needle has trudged in the same direction in 2024.

The victims are usually from the arts and humanities.

The politicians suggest there are quick fixes, when there are none present.

In Malaysia, it is about TVET retraining as a means to employment.

But perhaps the more obvious answer. Supply has overwhelmed.

The grass is greener

India had a far more direct even if organic solution since the 70s and 80s. Leave the country.

If the desired jobs are not prevalent even if the training for the said job is abundantly available, then the reasonable course of action is to thank the alma mater post-graduation and head abroad.

To the United States and other developed countries, they went. Most thrived as technology workers at a time technologies bloomed. Today, America’s richest community is South Asians and they set roots only in the last fifty years.

Cynically, in the trio of purpose, money can eclipse the need to be recognised or utilised as per training. For several decades, thousands of Filipino doctors migrated to the United States to become nurses. Due to the pay package. While Filipino doctors in their home country earn on average below US$1,000 (RM4,440) per month, when downgraded as nurses in the United States they earn an average of US$7,000 a month.

The math does the explaining.

The political springboard

Human Resources Minister Steven Sim countered that the underemployment numbers are overstated.

While at the same time, the PTPTN fund which pays for most local students contemplates ending loans for courses with low repayment (below 50 per cent). Since RM32 billion is owing, PTPTN wants to cut its losses.

The huge hole in the company’s finances weakens the minister’s rebuttal.

Those from low-prospect degrees are part of the two million who get paid much less and therefore largely incapacitated to repay student loans.

PTPTN’s remarks betray their own poor assessment of our present and future graduates’ chances to better jobs. Though, them cutting ties with poorer courses means they shut down weak institutions as those centres rely solely on PTPTN to record profits. The one good outcome from otherwise a depressing situation.

Why bother?

It’s a convoluted subject matter, which ends up a poisoned chalice. All parties present their excuses so that they avoid blame and walk away.

It matters a lot because many also expect their education to lift them up. From the PPR government housing to the condo.

This problem is set to stay, the only part to work on is how to respond.

Oversupply remains, as do opportunities abroad. Reorganising one’s skills to the market especially through TVET is a viable path but not a guarantee.

Since the factors shift at so many levels and frequently, the fighting chance for young people as they compete with each other for the quality jobs left or they themselves create quality jobs is to take charge.

Sounds simple, and a tad bit condescending but a lot of our young wait for the opportunity to be presented to them, and flagged. And expect a degree of cajoling. Otherwise, they’d take what is convenient or easy to get. Boutique assistant, motorbike deliverer.

They may be fatalist because their training never made them own the situation or their futures. Maybe the real oversell is their qualifications. They feel the paper salvages them rather than convinced they are the product, with or without the paper.

A lot are resigned, but not all. The go getters and sloggers are getting on just fine.

Good for the inspired but how about the two million?

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.