Postgraduate trends and outlook 2011
Demand for postgraduate education remains strong through the rise and fall of the world’s economy. Yeong Suk Yee explores the latest developments in the local and international scene.
Regardless of shifts in the global economic climate, further education has proven to be highly important in both industry and academia.
Due to the progressively challenging business environment, rising employer expectations and volatile nature of the economy, more people are turning to postgraduate studies to enhance their employment prospects, upgrade themselves or simply to ride out the global recession.
Employers may now have bigger recruitment budgets as business starts to pick up again, but this does not stop them from being selective. Thus the recent decade showed no signs of slowing down in terms of postgraduate enrolments as more individuals returned to the classroom to equip themselves with the tools and qualifications to excel in the employment arena.
The local scene
Malaysia’s economy has now entered the post-industrial phase where research and development, ICT and services sectors have begun to take precedence over the manufacturing field.
In its race against the clock to achieve its goal of becoming a developed nation by the year 2020, Malaysia has to speed up its transition into an innovation-based economy. However, the country is in severe need of highly qualified academics, researchers and professionals. So on top of efforts to lure back and retain talent, the government has set aside a large chunk of its budget to promote postgraduate studies.
The number of postgraduate students grew significantly in 2009 – credited to both the global economic recession and strong financial support from the government. During the recent recession, RM50mil was allocated under the second economic stimulus package for the pursuit of full-time postgraduate studies locally in 2009 and 2010.
To develop more qualified graduates, the governments has also recently launched the RM2.68bil MyBrain15 programme, which is expected to further promote postgraduate studies, particularly in the fields of science and technology, social science and liberal arts, and sciences. This was made possible by the phasing out of a large percentage of Public Service Department (PSD) Scholarships.
According to a December 2010 report in the Star, Datuk Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin, the Ministry of Higher Education, said that the government is aiming to churn out 5,000 graduates, 40,000 Master’s graduates and 500 industrial PhD holders by 2015. The programme is expected to produce 48,000 PhD holders by 2020.
In 2010, local postgraduate enrolments rose by 23% to 99,852. The figure consists of 70.72% Master’s, 23.27% PhD, 3.17% postgraduate diploma and 2.82% professional qualification enrolments.
Growth in Asia
The tremendous growth of postgraduate studies in Asia was led by China, which saw student enrolment grow from 14% to 20% between 2002 and 2007 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics). According to a report by Xinhua news agency, 1.5 million people sat for China’s postgraduate entrance exam in early 2011 − a 7% increase from the year before.
In Singapore, total postgraduate enrolments grew by 30.25% in the past five years. The total number of enrolment in higher degree courses was 19,483 in 2009, based on statistics from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore Management University (SMU), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National Institute of Education.
International figures
International students continued to flock to popular further education destinations such as the US, UK and Australia.
The Institute of International Education (IEE) Network’s most recent statistics (2009/10 session) revealed that out of the 690,923 international students in the US, 42.53% were pursuing postgraduate studies.
The UK has the second highest number of international postgraduate students (after the US). According to the UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), the number of international students enrolled in postgraduate studies rose by 8% in 2010 to 156,820, making up 55.86% of international enrolments and 27% of total postgraduate enrolments in the UK.
In 2009, 17,311 Malaysians were enrolled in higher education courses in Australia, accounting for 8.5% of total international enrolments. Total international postgraduate enrolments grew by 10.4% to 89,098. 80% and 11.5% enrolled in Master’s and doctoral degrees respectively, out of which 85.5% were for coursework and 14.2% research.
Popular subject matters
As of 2009, education courses made up 20% of postgraduate enrolments in Malaysia. This was followed closely by management and business (18%), engineering and pure sciences (9%). In Singapore, engineering came up tops (34%) in total higher degree enrolment, followed by law (14.9%) and natural, physical and mathematical science (12.78%).
According to US Council of Graduate Studies, more than 50% of all graduate students were enrolled in education, business and health sciences postgraduate courses in 2009. Meanwhile in the UK, the top five most popular postgraduate fields (based on total student enrolments) are subjects allied to medicine, engineering and technology, biological sciences and computer science. In Australia, the top two fields of postgraduate study are management and commerce.
Great expectations
To address the shortage of talent with professional expertise and soft skills, many Asian universities have begun to emphasise quality research and active learning among students, particularly at postgraduate level. These institutions are also developing more research facilities and opportunities, and hiring more researchers and academics from overseas, to improve the research status of local universities.
Competition for graduate jobs will only heighten, as the number of degree holders continues to rise. Thus emphasis will be placed not only on increasing the number of postgraduates but also on improving the learning experience to produce higher-quality and well-rounded graduates.
This article first appeared in postgradasia 2011, Issue 1.
