Where has all the money gone?

Between the years 2001 and 2002, there were 10,000 unemployed graduates, a number which has swelled to 163,000 for the year 2008-2009, Dr. Lim Teck Ghee, director of the Centre For Policy Initiatives writes in a commentary in The Sun Daily. In his article, he calls for an explanation for the RM1.3 billion allocated for the training and retraining of unemployed graduates in the country.

The numbers cited by Lim in his article are staggering and his arguments against these retraining programmes justifiable. Every parent of a school-going child should question, why, year after year more and more funds are allocated for graduate retraining yet the numbers of unemployed grads are rising. The hundreds of millions should have been poured into raising the quality of education in public universities,  even your local 'mamak stall' proprietor could work that out. I fully agree with Lim that if the problem is nipped in the bud, the rest will take care of itself.  Yet 8 years since the first graduate training programme was introduced, the powers-that-be are still touting the break-and-fix approach. Is it any wonder that Malaysian parents continue to scrimp and save to send their children abroad for their post-secondary education?