The University of Malta is celebrating the success of its students and conferring certificates to over 3,400 graduands, 1,300 of whom are at postgraduate level. For another consecutive year, the number of research doctoral graduates has increased. This year, 27 candidates will be receiving their Ph.D.
A recently published study, 'Employability Index 2015', issued by the Ministry for Education and Employment at the request of the Malta Employers Association, quotes some interesting figures from the National Statistics Office and EU organisations. For example, Malta's average change in tertiary educational attainment over the period 2010-2013 is around eight percentage points. So the European Commission has placed Malta in the group of countries which have registered significant improvement, although still not producing enough graduates compared to the rest of the EU.
On this happy occasion of the graduation of so many University students, it is worth looking more closely at this report. For example, one can observe that over 80% of the University of Malta’s engineering graduates find employment in areas matching their qualification, a far better statistic than that registered by any other tertiary institution in Malta. This pattern of high employability rates can also be observed for other faculties of the University offering professional courses such as Health Sciences, Education and ICT. This report should convince guidance teachers that the best information to young people who are undecided about the various courses on offer in Malta is to avoid opting for degrees which seem to be easier to gain than ones which are erroneously described as 'theoretical' and 'less hands-on'. This report shows that employers actually want more University of Malta graduates and that these graduates have better employability prospects.
The University of Malta feels encouraged by these figures and believes that striving for excellence is the best way to bolster our graduates’ employability and to contribute to the development of Malta’s progress. But the role of the University is not simply to train graduates in the skills needed today so they can be easily pigeon-holed into jobs currently on the market. The University's mission is to prepare graduates who are flexible and easily re-trainable to work in different situations: graduates who will be ready to embrace the skills needed for tomorrow’s (still largely unknown) needs. These are essential qualities which graduates need in today's fast evolving knowledge-based society.
The Employability Index shows that these aims are largely being attained by our University. The study estimates that, for example, of the graduates from 2013 who were in employment by 2014, 71.1% found a job which matched exactly their qualifications, and they had just the right skills to do the job. However, around 20% of the graduates found a job which did not match exactly their qualifications and around the same number of graduates were deemed to be overqualified for their job, with 12.5% being both 'mismatched' and 'overqualified'. The faculties with most students finding “matched” jobs were, as one would expect, the largely professional courses. Regarding many of these faculties, at Moreover, these faculties' graduates from 2013 and 2012 did almost just as well. Others, like the Faculty of Arts, the Institute of European Studies and the Faculty for Social Wellbeing seem to be preparing graduates who can go on to work in breadth of areas not entirely related to their qualifications. Even the Faculty of Laws seems to be heading towards this trend, although to a lesser extent.
If we are ever to reach EU targets for the number of tertiary education graduates, it is important that we value this flexibility of the working graduate. Job requirements are changing more rapidly than ever, becoming always more sophisticated. More jobs will need to be done by persons who possess critical and analytical skills, and who can tackle a problem in novel ways, which is just what a university graduate should be able to do. We should reach a point where it is natural for a company to expect that, for example, a managerial post would be occupied by a lawyer or an engineer or a scientist.
Even the rate of 'overqualified' graduates should be viewed with a careful eye. Those graduates who are just a right fit for their first job are probably the ones who would need re-training in a few years’ time. Overqualified graduates are more 'future-proof'. If the problem is that the labour market is not providing adequate jobs for graduates, then we should be thankful that our University is forward looking and we should hope that future employers will catch up soon.
We must also remember that our graduates are not only future employees. Several of them will be future employers and self-employed individuals, and it is here, in particular, where we need people who have transferable skills and who are just ahead of the race in capabilities. One important example of a programme which has this very specific target in sight is the Master in Entrepreneurship. It is quite useless for such a course to produce graduates who hit the labour market 'just-in-time'. This course, and all other University courses, should be pro-active and produce flexible graduates whose abilities look to the future rather than seek to satisfy only what we need now. Even in this regard it seems that the 'Employability Index' report is indicating that the University of Malta is on the right track.
Prof. Mary Anne Lauri
Pro-Rector
Students and Institutional Affairs
University of Malta