Over the last 10 to 20 years a silent revolution has been happening in the workplace. The spread of cheap and easy-to-use information technology from the desktop computer to the smartphone has changed the ways people do business. As automation has gradually penetrated every aspect of our lives many traditional jobs have started to disappear and there has been a growth in the number of jobs which require complex skills. Covid-19 has accelerated these employment trends and this means that your future career success will depend on ensuring that you have the correct skillset.

There is a very strong relationship between a person’s skills and their years of education. People with more education tend to have more skills and this is why people with higher levels of education are more employable, and also why people with more education earn more money and have greater job security, even in the midst of a pandemic. The correct skillset combines good interpersonal skills, with solid technical skills and the capacity to use information quickly, critically and creatively. The good news is that if you make the correct choices about further or higher education you can get the skills that you need because these are exactly the skills that you learn when studying for a diploma, professional qualification or degree.

Many people think that education is only about the name of the discipline or course they are studying, but there is lot more to it than that. Of course, studying accounting or business will give you a deep understanding of that field, but you may not realise that the ways in which you are taught and assessed are also teaching you additional skills. Tackling assignments with other students will develop your social skills, you’ll need to learn about planning and time management, you’ll get practical experience of how to research and judge information, and when you put it all together you’ll discover how to present your conclusions in good written English and present them to an audience. These are the skills that will make you more employable and all these things are built into the well-designed programmes of study offered by Sunway College Kuching.

The pandemic has had a big impact on the finances of many families and many young people are making the hard choice between continuing their education or getting a job. This means it is actually the very best time to invest in your education because it’s a simple matter of economics, of supply and demand. At the moment lots of young people are competing for unskilled jobs, this makes it hard to get a job and it also keeps pay low. If you study now then in a year or two when the economy really improves you will have the right skills that are in short supply so you will be even more valuable. Anyone who has studied accounting or business can tell you that investing wisely leads to much bigger returns in the future … understanding these principles is a good example of what makes young people with qualifications in accountancy or business more valuable. So, when planning your career, if you want the best, now is the time to invest.

by Professor Hew Gill, Associate Provost of Sunway University