OCTOBER 2 — Towards the end of every year, university halls across Malaysia fill with a familiar scene. Graduates walk across stages in robes and mortarboards, proud parents wait with flowers and cameras, and social media fills with photographs celebrating years of hard work. Then the ceremony ends, the robes come off, and one question inevitably follows many graduates home: “So, what are you going to do now?” For generations, the expected answer was straightforward — find a job. Today, that expectation is changing. Graduates are increasingly encouraged not merely to become job seekers but job creators: to start businesses, pursue innovation and eventually employ others. It is an attractive ambition for a country seeking higher-value growth and a more entrepreneurial economy. But job creators are not made simply by telling graduates to become entrepreneurs. They have to be developed.
Malaysia is already moving in this direction. The Higher Education Ministry’s Entrepreneurship Action Plan for higher education institutions for 2026–2030 reflects a broader ambition to nurture student entrepreneurs who can eventually become job creators and industry builders. The direction matters because it positions entrepreneurship as part of Malaysia’s human-capital development rather than merely an alternative for graduates who cannot find conventional employment. The latest available graduate statistics from the Department of Statistics Malaysia show that employment remains the dominant pathway. In 2024, 86.4 per cent of employed graduates were employees, while 7.2 per cent were self-employed and 5.6 per cent were employers. Notably, the number of graduate employers grew by 10.4 per cent from the previous year, while self-employed graduates increased by 16 per cent.
These figures are encouraging, but they also remind us why “job seeker” and “job creator” should not be treated as opposing identities. Today’s employee may be tomorrow’s employer. Working for someone else is not necessarily a failure of entrepreneurial ambition; for some future founders, it may be where that ambition becomes realistic. Time spent inside an organisation can teach lessons difficult to reproduce fully in a classroom: how customers actually behave, how teams deal with conflict, how deadlines slip, how financial constraints affect decisions and how difficult it can be to manage people whose livelihoods depend on the organisation. Employment can therefore be more than a destination. It can also be a training ground for entrepreneurship.
That does not mean every graduate must spend several years in conventional employment before starting a business. Experience can come from many places — internships, freelancing, family businesses, mentorship, university ventures, community projects or running a small business while studying. Some graduates may already have enough exposure, networks and confidence to begin immediately, while others may need several years to build them. The more important point is that entrepreneurship requires capability, not merely courage. Encouraging young people to take risks is useful, but sustainable entrepreneurship also requires judgement, industry knowledge, financial understanding, leadership skills and the ability to make decisions when circumstances do not follow the business plan.
There is also an important difference between starting a business and becoming a job creator. A person can successfully create work for themselves without yet being able to create sustainable employment for others. Becoming an employer introduces another level of responsibility: salaries to sustain, people to recruit, performance to manage, customers to retain, regulations to understand and difficult decisions to make when business conditions change. Once other people depend on a business for their livelihoods, entrepreneurship is no longer only about pursuing an individual dream. It also becomes a responsibility to employees and their families.
This distinction matters enormously in Malaysia because smaller businesses are not peripheral to the economy. Micro, small and medium enterprises employed about 8.09 million people in 2025, accounting for 48.7 per cent of total employment. Developing people capable of building sustainable businesses is therefore not simply an entrepreneurship issue; it is also an employment and national-development issue. If even some of today’s young entrepreneurs eventually build enterprises capable of employing five, 20 or 100 people, their contribution extends far beyond creating a livelihood for themselves. The challenge is ensuring that more promising ventures survive long enough to reach that stage.
Universities have an important role in that journey, but entrepreneurship development cannot end with a business plan, a pitching competition or a compulsory entrepreneurship subject. Those experiences can provide useful foundations, but aspiring founders also need exposure to real customers, real constraints and real consequences. Industry has a role too. Internships and early-career employment can give future entrepreneurs professional networks, technical knowledge and an understanding of how organisations actually operate. Mentors, financial institutions, government agencies and established businesses form another part of the ecosystem. If Malaysia wants sustainable job creators, the conversation needs to move beyond simply encouraging young people to “start something” towards helping them build the capabilities required to keep it going, grow it and eventually create opportunities for others.
As another generation of graduates leaves university, perhaps the question should not be whether they will become job seekers or job creators. Careers rarely develop in such neat categories. A graduate may begin as an employee, become a freelancer, build a small venture and eventually employ others. Another may start a business immediately, while someone else may spend years developing expertise before taking that step. What matters is whether they are building the knowledge, experience and judgement needed for whatever comes next.
Malaysia certainly needs more people who can create jobs. But expecting every graduate to become an entrepreneur immediately misses how entrepreneurship is often built in the real world. Businesses can be registered in a day; building one that survives, grows and provides livelihoods for others takes much longer. If Malaysia wants more job creators tomorrow, it must be equally serious about developing capable people today.
* Dr Nor Farah Hanis Zainun is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Business Management, Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM).
** This is the personal opinion of the writers or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
