Since the dawn of the 4th Industrial revolution, there has been a growing adoption of digital technologies across all sectors in Malaysia and the world. Consequently, there is a growing demand for digital tech jobs.
However, there is a lack of awareness among students on digital tech careers, and quality digital tech tertiary courses available.
To scale this awareness and to empower parents and students to make more well-informed decisions about which tertiary education pathways to take – across digital tech and other sectors – the Malaysian Digital Economy Corp (MDEC) is partnering a local tech firm to launch an AI (artificial intelligence)-based platform.
The platform will profile and match students to in-demand tertiary-level digital tech courses and scholarships.
The Digital Tech Tertiary Matching Platform was made available to the public during the #mydigitalmaker Fair 2019 held in Kuala Lumpur.
The Vice President of Tech Talent at MDEC noted that many students lack information about which digital tech tertiary courses and education funds they qualify for, and which universities have industry-relevant courses with high employment rates.
The only way to find out at the moment is for parents and students to spend hours researching each individual university.
With this AI-based platform, students will receive personalised guidance on recommended pre-University or University level courses and scholarships in just minutes, thus simplifying and speeding up their decision-making process.
By entering their academic results into the platform, students will receive personalised recommendations to guide their applications to universities and scholarship providers.
Students will also be guided on subjects they need to improve should they wish to target specific digital tech courses offered by Premier Digital Tech Institutions (PDTI).
PDTIs are universities and polytechnics that have proven track records in high graduate employability, industry engagement and career services.
The platform will empower students to make better decisions about their tertiary education, and help school counsellors to play a more prominent role to promote tech tertiary courses and prepare students for their tertiary pathways that lead to high-value digital tech careers.
Importantly, the platform is one of the many initiatives undertaken by Malaysia to ensure that the country has a sustainable supply of digital and technology talents to power the ecosystem.
Digital technology will drive the economy
In an earlier report, MDEC believes that closer cooperation between the government and private sectors on artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT) and big data will raise Malaysia’s competitiveness.
It is important for the government to leverage digital technology to improve efficiency and productivity for a business model.
Businesses can also capitalise on digital technology to maximise their earnings, which in turn would provide a tremendous impact on the growth of the local economy.
SMEs and corporates need to pursue innovations for a higher level of accuracy and competency.
Currently, pockets of the industry employ extremely cutting-edge adoptions. For example, the medical sector uses AI to bring a higher level of accuracy for diagnosis.
However, Malaysia is still playing catch-up and requires all players to step up their adoption level across the private and public sectors.
MDEC said government’s role is to enable young talent to have exposure in technology, provided by the connectivity and availability of the policy framework that is flexible enough to nurture and encourage innovations.
Hence, MDEC is working to gather young talents throughout the country and give them the right level of exposure in design thinking, best technology and communication skills. In doing so, Malaysia’s young talent will be nurtured.
The aim is to develop talent to not only become workers but to become innovators.