When a fresh graduate goes for a job interview armed with an impressive grade point average (GPA) but is unable to make eye contact, give a proper introduction or hold a short conversation without tensing up, something is wrong. Not with the graduate but with us, the educators.
Studies have found that more than half of Malaysian graduates struggle with professional communication, teamwork, and adapting to workplace culture, while employers, in various surveys, have said they expect graduates to possess at least 50% soft skills. They have also cited poor character, attitude and personality as among the top reasons for rejecting candidates.
These insights are not new. What’s new is that we are approaching a policy inflection point that demands an honest answer.
The Malaysia Higher Education Blueprint (RPTM) 2026–2035 has signalled a decisive shift.
When Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Zambry Abdul Kadir told Parliament last year that universities “must incorporate human values, shaping minds and character”, he was not articulating an aspiration. He was diagnosing a crisis.
The question for universities is this: are we ready to respond?
We can share knowledge, build discipline and prepare students for structured professional demands in a lecture hall but we cannot teach a student how to navigate a disagreement with a colleague without burning bridges nor make them want to step up to help those in need; nor can we build the kind of confidence that grows only from having done something real – from having served, stumbled and persevered.
These qualities are not soft skills. These are the load-bearing walls of a career and a character. And they are built almost entirely outside the classroom.
This is why student clubs, community outreach programmes, volunteerism, leadership training and co-curricular engagement matter. These are not peripheral features of a university education; they are, or should be, its beating heart.
When a student organises a blood donation campaign, they learn more about stakeholder management than any textbook can offer. When they emcee a public forum, they discover something about their own voice: its power and its limits. When they work on a welfare drive alongside people from different ethnic and economic backgrounds, they begin to understand Malaysia not as a demographic statistic but as a lived reality. These are civilisational skills.
Malaysia occupies a distinctive position in this conversation. Ours is a country of extraordinary human diversity – one in which the ability to work across cultural, linguistic and religious boundaries is not a nice-to-have but a foundational requirement for national cohesion.
TalentCorp’s Malaysia Critical Occupations List 2024/2025 identifies communication and leadership among the most sought-after yet persistently underdeveloped competencies in the country’s graduate workforce while the 12th Malaysia Plan (2021–2025) emphasises the need for a flexible, well-rounded workforce ready for a transforming economy.
The Madani Economy, which targets creating 500,000 high-value jobs by 2030, will only be realised if those roles are filled by graduates who can think critically, communicate confidently and lead collaboratively.
There is a tendency in institutional life to treat the student experience as a pipeline: raw material in, finished product out. Curriculum delivered. Exams done. Degree conferred. This is not education. It is credentialing.
A university that takes its mission seriously understands itself as a place of formation, a space in which young people are not merely trained but transformed. The student who arrives uncertain, untested and provincial should leave four years later more aware of what it means to live together in diversity, more capable of contribution, and more prepared for the unpredictable demands of real life.
This transformation does not happen by accident. It requires deliberate investment in the full breadth of student experience, in student life divisions that are empowered rather than marginalised; in clubs and societies that are mentored rather than merely registered; in community partnerships that are sustained rather than merely photogenic.
It requires us to measure what actually matters. Not just how many students graduated, but also how many led, served and came back to give.
The RPTM presents Malaysia’s universities with an opportunity they must not squander. When Zambry spoke of shaping minds and character as a core mandate of higher education, he was offering institutions permission to go beyond ranking tables and research outputs.
That means investing in student life divisions with the same seriousness we invest in academic faculties. It means treating a student’s record of community service with the same awe we accord their GPA.
We are not in the business of churning out graduates. We are here to groom leaders, global citizens and individuals capable of contributing to something greater than themselves. The scroll is important but the person who earned it matters more.
GOPI NAIDU APPAMAN and PROF DR SIVABALA NAIDU
Quest International University
