How Many University Graduates is Too Many?
It would be an understatement to say that Mr Ong Ye Kung’s statement about a country’s ideal number of University graduates rustled a few feathers. People bristled at the suggestion that more than half of the population is come to terms with the fact that they should not be expecting a University education, because the Economy cannot support such a large number of graduate jobs, which would then lead to a high graduate unemployment rate. Our education system has always been held up as the pinnacle of a highly meritocratic system — study hard, get good grades, graduate with a degree and the sky is the limit. To seemingly suggest a “quota” of university graduates demolishes our long held notion of meritocracy. Especially for the earlier generations who saw their job prospects curtailed by a lack of higher education, they simply cannot come to terms with what they believe is a death sentence on the future of their children. Is there thus any justification for insisting on an optimal number of graduates?
1. Graduate Unemployment is a Very Real Problem; Just Look at China & India
In a 2014 BBC article, it is estimated that the graduate unemployment rate in China and India is at a staggering 30%. Just let that sink in for a moment. Imagine spending upwards of SGD30,000 on a sparkling degree from NUS and finding yourself jobless. If we include the opportunity cost of forgoing employment in that four years it took to earn a degree, you are looking at upwards of SGD100,000 spent for nothing. Not only is this a waste on a personal level, it is a waste on an economic level; society is committing resources to educating an individual that would not produce economic value that employers desire, at least not at the rate the individual would expect. Instead, we would be better off if we spent money on training the skills of these workers to ensure that they can find suitable employment after graduation, rather than a generic academic education. The problem with university education? It provides generic academic education rather than skill-based training, barring specialized degrees like medicine, law, engineering and accounting. And if we keep churning out graduates who can read Plato and engage in ferocious debate about the validity of Euclidean Geometry but does not actually have relevant skills for real work, it will simply worsen the mismatch between workers demanded and the graduates we are producing.
2. The Graduate Unemployment Problem is Real, But It’s Really the Government’s Job to Fix It
We are not talking about the government taking on a paternalistic route to ensuring jobs aplenty. On the contrary, the government should be looking to encourage and help grow the private sector to innovate and create the jobs that these graduates crave. When the government is one of the largest (if not the largest) employers in the country, it is inevitable that the paper chase seems to be the surest road to success due to the dearth of good quality private sector jobs. If we turn our attention to the STI, one would notice that apart from the banks, the largest corporations are government-linked ones. And what do these corporations require as a hiring policy? Good degrees. Thus it is really no surprise that everyone is fighting to get a degree - it certainly seems to be the surefire way for a good and comfortable life. Without the chance to pursue a degree, many are forced to resign to what is in their opinion, an average life without the chance of substantial upward mobility. Our country’s developmental history has created an economy that lacks the diversity one can find in most developed economies, and the lack of large private sector companies severely narrows one’s route to success. It is on the government to pursue a different growth trajectory and sow the seeds for a larger, strong private sector, now that we are blessed with the wealth and flexibility to chart our nation’s economic future.
3. We Really Need More Roads to Rome
It is futile to try to convince people that some of us should be going to ITE and Polytechnics because we need more “craftsmen” when the jobs in these areas cannot provide the mobility and job security that people crave. Meritocracy works because it taps on the innate hunger of people for progress and betterment. It leverages on rationality and pursuit of interest that is inherent in free market system, and people will naturally gravitate towards the best jobs and will fight for the best routes to success. Artificially curtailing university places in an attempt to divert students to other educational pathways is paternalistic, contradicts our meritocratic values and ultimately inefficient, as any first year economics student will tell you. Instead, the government should be looking at ways to improve the ITE and Polytechnic offering such that students would naturally gravitate towards these avenues, once they can see that these routes also offer a chance for success. Until that happens, the priority should not be to limit university places, but invest in creating alternative roads to Rome.
Conclusion
There probably is an ideal number of university graduates, but setting a quota and getting people to abide by it is not the way to make it happen. It is necessary to develop alternative pathways in order to ease the competition for university places, rather than trying to decide who should and should not go to university. A deeply meritocratic society such as ours would never stand for what we view as roadblock to achieving social mobility. However the deeper question at hand, is whether universities should be seen as a place for “skills & vocational training”, or as a higher learning institute that should be open to as many as possible without consideration for the needs of the economy and employers. That, is a question for another time.
This article was originally published at www.deanslist.sg.
