Western careers advice for international students ‘misdirected’

Western universities are shepherding their foreign graduates into mediocre jobs with local employers and ignoring the often vastly superior opportunities in students’ homelands, an international education expert said.

Kuala Lumpur-based consultant Louise Nicol said universities were failing many of their overseas students with a myopic approach to careers services that focused exclusively on opportunities in the host country, on the assumption that Western work experience would equip them for jobs with multinationals back home.

This overlooked a “massive shift in graduate recruitment”, with Asian companies supplanting Western corporations as the optimum places to launch careers. Students who stayed away too long risked being branded “sea turtles” who had been “out of the loop for years” and had picked up annoying Western attitudes.

Universities that failed to grasp such dynamics risked jeopardising their future enrolments. “The economics of the Asian century will be more pivoted towards Asia,” said Ms Nicol, founder of the Asia Careers Group consultancy. “The biggest threat to universities that do not understand this is that foreign kids will spend a lot of money getting degrees, then go back home and not be able to get a job.”

She predicted that Chinese giants such as Tencent, Huawei and ICBC would overtake Western corporations as the employers of choice, attracting American, British and Australian graduates as well as native talent. Local employers were also gaining ascendancy in Southeast Asia.

“Of the top 10 companies in Malaysia to work for as a graduate, only one is non-Malaysian,” Ms Nicol said.

Jobs with local employers were also on the rise in India and even multinational hubs such as Hong Kong and Singapore. “We will see huge skill needs in the Global South,” Ms Nicol continued.

“I don’t think any university in the world is feeding into that through employment outreach in the students’ home countries. Point me to any university that’s helping students find work overseas.”

Ms Nicol said work in host countries – even if it meant staffing convenience stores, waiting in cafes or driving Ubers, as many international graduates ended up doing – could be valuable experience and fun. But students needed to assess whether they could afford that experience.

Low-skilled jobs in places like Australia might pay more than entry-level professional positions back home, but leave less change once the costs of food, transport and “extortionate” rent are factored in.

Students also needed a realistic understanding of the prospects for migration to the host country, or of parlaying Western experience into employment back home. “They need to go into it having done the sums, with their eyes open and with a view to their future careers.

“At the end of post-study work, they will probably have to go home – at which point, who is helping them navigate the graduate recruitment marketplace in, say, India? Who is helping them network so that when they go home, they can get a great job?”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com