Much has been written and said about the need for more graduates to work in the ICT, pharmaceutical, health and financial sectors, and a cursory look at newspaper job vacancy adverts clearly shows the high demand for workers in these areas.

However, the actual need for teachers and health care professionals is disguised. We get warnings, for example, from the Malta Union of Teachers about a possible future shortage in the availability of teachers, but can anyone quantify and qualify this shortage?

The substantial investment in Mcast and the setting up of Mater Dei Hospital and the University's Faculty of ICT were all essential to attract more students to tertiary education. However, the increase in the number of students entering post-secondary education will not solve the problem regarding the shortage of graduates and other suitably qualified personnel.

Effective workforce planning anticipates potential future imbalances between the supply and demand for different skills in time for action to be taken. Does the government conduct such planning? In order to do this, data needs to be collated to identify learning needs and gaps in the existing workforce.

For example, information about what the health system needs, such as hospital staffing levels, are not readily available. Studies carried out on the graduate workforce needs in this area have not delivered the expected results. They tend to show that the health services are facing shortages at present and will face shortages in the near future which may obstruct the internationalisation of our health care.

We know that the number of undergraduate students is increasing and there is concern that the resources available at University are not keeping pace with its needs, leading to a bottleneck in the availability of training facilities, such as proper laboratories and computer facilities. This could possibly result in graduates not being well prepared for the demands of the workplace in future.

The University should seriously consider creating a centre for workforce needs studies. Such a centre would, for example, tell us the effects of the increasing number of women in the graduate workforce (well over 50 per cent of current University students are women). What are the implications of this? What impact will it have on the future workforce?

A properly-run centre would carry out important research needed to identify workforce trends as well as fill in the main knowledge gaps to guide our youths in their selection of a rewarding future. It could be a centre of excellence that would scan the horizon, gather intelligence on the current workforce and analyse data on future supply and demand in all sectors. Through this analysis, it would be able to advise government on where investment is needed on a national level.

The centre's staff should consist of a group of workforce planners who would provide objective modelling, analysis and evidence-based recommendations to enable services and industry-driven strategic decisions to be taken. The increasing size, complexity and speed at which developments are taking place, the length of time it takes to train graduates, and the huge changes taking place within professions all conspire to make workforce planning difficult.

Leaders in education have the responsibility, together with service providers such as those in the ICT, health and financial sectors, to make sure that we manage both the supply and demand for skilled staff so that it is neither excessive (wasting taxpayers' money) nor insufficient (limiting industrial development and access to services).

Regular, more detailed profiling of the graduate workforce is a necessary step to achieve this. This is certainly not happening at present and there currently is a big hole in our knowledge about the workforce. We must be careful not to fall into it.

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