Graduate unemployment - October 24, 2003

I refer to Lawrence Zammit's letter (October 10). I agree with Mr Zammit's argument that the government's decision to expand the opportunities for learning at post-secondary and tertiary level was a very beneficial one. However, the conclusions reached by Mr Zammit are at times too superficial and do not do justice to the complexity of the problem.

The large increase of university graduates in various disciplines has contributed towards a greater public and organisational awareness of the useful role they can play in Maltese society. Such awareness has helped to professionalise jobs within diverse fields such as statistics, communications, health care, psychology, and others.

However, it is also true that with its approximately 149,000 employees, Malta has one of the smallest labour markets in the world. New work opportunities will not be generated as a direct consequence of an always increasing number of graduates. Employment vacancies are created through a healthy and viable economy, which goes beyond the simple availability of more graduates.

It is interesting to note that the number of students following university courses is, to an extent, self-regulated in line with the availability of employment opportunities. For instance, the number of arts students has decreased in the last years, as prospective students realised that the available employment opportunities in the field were also decreasing.

On the other hand, courses leading to qualifications for which there is a greater market need, such as BSc IT, BSc Business and Computing and BA Tourism Studies, have increased in number. The problem with this self-regulating mechanism is that before prospective students realise that the choice of specific subjects will probably not lead them to the desired work opportunities, many graduates find themselves unemployed or underemployed. The extent of graduate unemployment and underemployment is often underestimated in official statistics.

Mr Zammit argued that only 6.6 per cent of all unemployed are seeking employment as legislators, senior officials, managers, professionals, technicians, and associated professionals. He concluded that the number indicates a low level of graduate unemployment. Presumably, the figure of 6.6 per cent comes from ETC statistics (as NSO statistics do not include such detail). The main problem with this argument is that a survey recently carried out by the Students Advisory Services (SAS) in collaboration with the Workers' Participation Development Centre (WPDC) of the University of Malta found that only 3.1 per cent of all those who graduated in 2002 sought the help of ETC or other employment agencies to find employment.

In other words, most graduates do not register with the ETC and so their statistics may not be a good indicator of graduate unemployment.

Apart from graduate unemployment, which is already difficult to determine by looking at official statistics, there is the other issue of underemployment which is even more invisible. Underemployed persons tend not to use the skills and knowledge that they acquired throughout their education and often suffer from worse employment conditions (such as wages) than what is reasonable for their experience and qualifications. High underemployment is often related to high unemployment.

When graduates feel that the risk of remaining unemployed is very high, they can more easily settle for the first job they find, often at the cost of being underemployed.

The study by SAS found that a third of all those who were conferred with their academic qualifications in November 2002 are employed in a job which did not demand their university qualification as an entry requirement. This can be an indication of underemployment.

Mr Zammit quoted NSO that a third of the total number of persons in employment are legislators, senior officials, managers, professionals, technicians, and associated professionals.

However, a sizeable proportion of these persons are not university or post-secondary school graduates. For instance, until a few years ago, promotion to middle and upper management levels with the government, the largest employer in Malta, used to occur mainly on the basis of seniority rather than qualifications.

Many of these persons are still in employment, and, so, one cannot imply that graduates at this employment level constitute a third of the whole employed populations.

The issue of graduates and the economy is in continual evolution and so it needs to be periodically monitored to examine trends and potential problems before they happen. We cannot simply conclude that the increase in the number of students did not lead to significant graduate unemployment. We need to examine each and every course offered by post-secondary and tertiary institutions and understand the yearly trend of their graduate employment rates.

When such research is properly carried out, one will notice that while some courses are leading to good employment opportunities, others are not. Prospective students should be informed by competent authorities about the career prospects and availability of jobs at the end of each specific course. This would lessen the number of education-employment mismatches which are detrimental to personal lives and expensive to society.