Tag: Degree

38 Year Old Jobless PMET Divorced, Distressed

Hi Gilbert,

I truly need help I am feeling suicidal at times. My life has been a challenge since the beginning of my life. I try to get pass through by trying to compare myself to the less fortunate. I do not know how much longer I can hold on. I hope we can meet up and talk.

I also hope you can publish the following at your site. Hopefully, there would be some like-minded readers who can provide some insight about my situation. If you can, please edit it for me.

I am just stating facts and grieves of my life, if you want to be critical, please step out of your comfort zone and reply at a logical level. I am a true-blue Singaporean with roots as deep as 3 generations, aged 38.

While in Secondary school, I started my working life sweeping the streets, literally. My single mom couldn’t afford to send me to a computer school after secondary school which was my interest. Thus, I have to work on school nights and weekends as a hotel cleaner from 11pm to 7am but that took a toll on my health and my education. Not to mention I had family issues. Unable to handle it, I dropped out of school, worked my way up slowly. After a few years of local jobs and my own business, I started my career in a multi-national company with rapid rise to management level. However, armed with only a O level cert, I could not get above $4.5k salary even though the role usually gets more, alot more.

When I tried to get a new job, I couldn’t as I was not “educated” enough. I even remember when I went for an interview with a local hiring agency, the director of the company asked me why am I getting paid $4.5k with only a O level education. Moving forward, everyone wants to negotiate my salary dependent on my previously-earned salary.

This would not happen in any other 1st world nation as they would not only look at your education only but your ability and the job role they offering as well. A culture only present in Singapore among developed nations!

To SINGAPORE HR Folks : Does it really matter, what I drew in my previous role? Would you pay me a roadsweeper’s salary if I did 6 months of sweeping the roads as I cannot get employed? Staff remuneration should be based on the fact that what role you are offering, and a competitive remuneration to ensure retention.

I stopped work so I can go after a Masters as a maturde candidate. I have passed my Masters without even taking a degree course. For those who are wondering, how? I not ashamed to say I am pretty smart (Singapore Mensa tested at 142 IQ) and anyone I know would easily tell you I have pretty high E.Q. as well. I never needed to go to school to learn these stuff, I read or learn through life experiences and pretty much grasp almost anything.

8 months have almost passed since completion of my Masters, and I still don’t have a job. I was even willing to take up non-IT roles as Condo Manager for $3k. Though I was able to impress in the interview, I was not offered a role. Only to find out later, that it was likely they were only willing to offer $2.8k for the position, which is the same they are willing to offer an inexperienced staff with diploma.

I cannot get government jobs or government-related jobs which are advertised everyday, simply because I do not fit the profiled definition of a normal candidate.

I have about $100k in the CPF unusable. I can’t afford a HDB, as I need to be employed and I cannot apply for BTO. Furthermore, I went through a divorce, I cannot get a HDB BTO home without waiting for 3 years after my divorce. I would be 39 by then, and by the time I get a home, I would be 45.

I now sit in J.B. (Malaysia) still applying for jobs in Singapore while trying to figure out if I can start out on my own. Even trying to be an entrepreneur in Singapore is difficult, I cannot afford an office location. I cannot apply for grant for entrepreneurship as I have a previous company when I started my IT business. This is restricting me from applying for a government grant under the entrepreneurship programme.

All those people who support the current political administration, please tell me what is wrong with the picture? Am I not hardworking? Am I dependent on the government to spoon feed me? Am I too demanding?

I am stressed to the extreme, though I don’t show it to people much. I still put up a fighting front, as no one likes a person who complaints too much. But it is getting to me, I needed an outlet.

I need to know that there are also people like me who seep through the gap so I don’t feel so alone.

Steve

Source: www.transitioning.org

August 10, 2017
SDP: Just Whom Is The PAP’s Education Policy Serving

When he was Minister of State for Education, Dr Ng Eng Hen said that “Our universities must become engines of growth for our economy.”

In 2012, Minister for Trade and Industry Lim Hng Kiang reinforced this point saying that our education system is “to build industry-relevant manpower capabilities for the economy.”

We had even wanted to become the ‘Boston of the East’, with our universities modeled on Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But Education Minister Ong Ye Kung now says that the number of graduates will be capped at 30 to 40 percent of the student population because the government had, in the past. placed an over-emphasis on academic qualifications in education.

This chop-and-change approach to education has damaged the country’s ability to plan for the longer term. For example, the PAP had at one time focused on Information Technology and later switched to preparing students for life sciences. Its current emphasis is on “technology adoption” – whatever that means.

Such short-sightedness contradicts PM Lee Hsien Loong’s boast of the PAP’s “far-sighted leadership who can anticipate problems”. If the leadership is. indeed, far-sighted, how did we place emphasis on our universities being growth engines for our economy and become the Boston of the East only to realise now that we have over-emphasised academic qualifications?

Serving local or foreign students?

And while the PAP caps the number of Singaporean graduates, it subsidises foreign students under the Global Schoolhouse project.

A majority of international students studying here are given Tuition Grants (totaling more than $200 million per year) as well as scholarships (some of which are not open to Singaporean students). It is reported that foreign students make up between 18 and 20 percent of the total undergraduate intake in Singapore.

In addition, foreign students receiving the grants have to serve a bond upon graduation (which many, by the way, don’t fulfill). They further compete with local graduates for jobs, many of whom are as it is having a hard time finding employment.

The discrimination is made even more unpalatable when one considers Singaporean parents spending an average of $21,000 a year on their child’s university education. This is more than twice the global average, with over half of the households going into debt because of it. These parents even prioritise funding their children’s education over paying their bills or saving for retirement.

And the PAP is limiting the number of local graduates while funding foreign ones? Mr Ong Ye Kung must explain whom exactly his latest policy is serving.

Read SDP’s alternative education policy: Educating For Creativity And Equality: An Agenda For Transformation.

Source: http://yoursdp.org

May 6, 2017
Difficult To Get A Job With General Degree And No Work Experience

Hi Mr. Tan,

I came across your blog and would like to share my thoughts and experiences with you.

I have a diploma in business (merit) from a local polytechnic. After NS, I was rejected by NUS for a place in Business School but was offered sociology instead. Because of my interests in business, I did a minor in management and realised to my shock that 30% of those in business school were foreigners – from Vietnam, China, Malaysia who don’t even understand business terms!

After a year, I lost interest in my course and just breezed through and scraped by with a basic pass degree. Although I admit this is my fault for not working hard and securing a comfortable government job like a few of my peers, but the whole idea is that the private sector is a completely different ball game although.

When I graduated, I sent in hundreds of resume but only got two interviews. The reality for fresh graduates is that unless you have a law, accountancy or medicine degree where you have secured a training contract of some sort then you are safe. Civil service aside, the private sector is very unwilling to take on someone with a general degree with no experience.

In fact, I have been unemployed for 2 years after graduating and helping our my mother in her restaurant. This has made me feel very inferior towards the S-pass holders from third-world countries!

Eventually, I decided to put my diploma as my highest educational level and secured a part-time job as an admin executive earning $1,200 a month with a local SME working about 20 hours a week.

I can tell you for a fact that the graduate employment surveys are bullshit! It is done on a voluntarily basis and only those who have secured jobs would have sufficient information to fill such as basic salary and so on. The reality is that the unemployed like myself are too ashamed to fill up the survey.

Even for those who do, what does 15% of FASS (faculty of arts and social science) graduates who are unemployed SIX months after graduation is no joke, considering the amount they spent on their education. I would personally estimate that around 30% of my peers are unemployed and another 30% are like me underemployed doing jobs like estate and insurance agents which do not even require degrees!

In my free time, I am also studying for an ACCA to enhance my future prospects after seeing how general degrees have no value in the job market while there are so many foreigners competing with Singaporeans who have served NS.

I have really really lost faith in our PAP.

Source: http://tankinlian.blogspot.sg

September 4, 2015
Think Before You Rush For A Degree

Parents and students eyeing a berth in one of the six local universities cheered the news that a record number of applicants was admitted this year.

Some 15,000 polytechnic graduates and A-level school leavers won a place for the new academic year, 1,000 more than last year, raising the age group’s rate of entry into university to 32 per cent.

The Ministry of Education said it was on track to reach its target cohort participation rate of 40 per cent by 2020.

No doubt, having a degree has always increased the prospects of better-paying jobs. The latest graduate employment survey released early this year showed median salary levels for the class of 2013 rose to $3,200 from $3,050 the year before.

The employment rate of degree holders also remained high, with close to nine in 10 finding jobs within six months of graduation.

Whether this will still be the case a few years from now remains to be seen.

Elsewhere, such as in South Korea and Taiwan, a glut of graduates followed the liberalisation of universities, resulting in increasing under- and unemployment of degree holders.

Social economists like Mr Phillip Brown from the United Kingdom argue that the conventional wisdom that a degree equals higher earnings does not hold true any more, when employers can scour the world to find the highest skills they can get for the least amount of money. This creates a sort of worldwide auction for high-skill, low-wage work.

As government officials have stressed, school leavers would do well not to blindly rush into a degree course before they figure out where their interests and talents lie. Some may even want to go out to work to hone their skills and understand the demands of the marketplace first.

Then, when they finally enter university, they would be better able to match their education with their career goals. When their talent can align with real-world needs, graduates would find that they have a better chance of success.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

July 13, 2015