The party’s Batu Kitang candidate, Abdul Aziz Isa, said there was too much emphasis on the number of graduates produced annually and too little on their chances of being employed.

“For example, we have a lack of Bumiputeras in the accounting profession. But the problem isn’t a lack of Bumiputera graduates in accounting. We have a lot,” he said.

He said the government was not guiding the graduates on what to do next, such as taking the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) examination.

The lack of professional accounting credentials contributed to these graduates’ failure to land jobs in accounting, and instead drove them to pursue careers in other fields, he told FMT.

Aziz also spoke of cases of engineering graduates ending up in banking or resorting to working as insurance agents, describing this as a waste of the years they had spent acquiring the qualifcation.

He said he would, if he were to get elected, tackle the issue by working to improve collaboration between industry and educational institutions.

Academy of Sciences Malaysia fellow Madeline Berma said Sarawak’s economic model was still labour-intensive while educational institutions were producing graduates for technology-intensive and high-skill economies.

She told FMT this was bad for Sarawak’s economy as it would slow down economic growth and waste human resources, leading to an outflow of talent from the state.

“It will also affect Sarawak’s long-term plan to develop local talent while addressing unemployment and underemployment in the state,” she said.

“There needs to be a structural change in the state’s economy. The next state government needs to heavily invest in high-technology and high-skill manufacturing industries.”