Abstract:
Unemployment among the educated youths is relatively higher than those of the less
educated. This problem is more acute for graduates, particularly among the art graduates.
But, management graduates are also finding difficulties in obtaining suitable jobs without
waiting for a considerable length of time after their graduation. Various reasons have
been put forward for analyzing graduate unemployment. Among them skills mismatch,
inadequate economic growth and queuing up for the public sector or the good private sector
jobs are prominent. In this setting, there is a research gap with regards to the identification
of various job opportunities available for graduates. This study, therefore, aims at filling
this gap with a view to guiding educational and other relevant policy makers to mitigate
this prolong problem.
For this purpose, this study carried out a survey of news paper advertisements based on
Sunday Observer and Sunday Times News Papers for a period of one month starting from
27th of July 2008. This gave a good snapshot situation of the job opportunities available
for educated youths commonly for all (both non-graduates and graduates) in the Sri Lankan
labour market. According to this survey, it could be found that 2 1 % of all job opportunities
were related to the field ofMarketing, 13.5% of job opportunities to the field of Accounting
and 12% of job opportunities to the field of General Management.
Further analysis of the survey data revealed that job opportunities available only for
Management graduates give a different picture. Accordingly, 23% of job opportunities
were opened to General Management graduates, while 9% and 8% of job opportunities
were available for Marketing and Accounting graduates respectively. In this scenario,
what is needed is producing more general graduates rather than producing graduates with
specializations in narrower fields. But, this study finds that this trend is inconsistent with
the way Commerce and Management Degree Programmes are being expanded by almost
all the Faculties of Commerce and Management studies in the University system. These
faculties are on the move to introduce more and more specialized programmes, and as a
result, this study concludes that this phenomenon will not ease the graduate unemployment
or reduce their waiting time for obtaining employment.
