VietNamNet Bridge - University students have been warned of the rising unemployment rate as the 4.0 industrial revolution is changing jobs.

Students will be asked to register their applications for school in March

Ngo Tuan Lam, a 12th grader in Hanoi, is of two minds about following higher education after finishing high school or going to vocational school. He has to make a decision soon because students across the country will be asked to register their applications for school in March.

Lam knows he won’t have the opportunities to apply for top-tier universities. He is not sure if he can find a job with a bachelor’s degree from a less prestigious school. 

Local newspapers report that though the economy has warmed up and the unemployment rate has decreased, the percentage of unemployed bachelor’s degree graduates is still on the rise.

Ngo Thi Ngoc Lan from Navigos Search, a recruitment consultancy firm, estimated that the number of university graduates remaining unemployed is five times higher than vocational school graduates.

Many bachelor’s degree graduates cannot find satisfactory jobs, while vocational school graduates can find good jobs with high pay.

However, this doesn’t mean that a bachelor’s degree is no longer significant. 

“Will employers care about degrees? The answer is ‘yes’. But they care about the quality of the degrees, and they don’t care if you finish university, junior college or vocational school,” Lan said.

She said that recruiters want to know if candidates have necessary knowledge and skills to fulfill tasks to be assigned  and if they can adapt to the working environment.

Meanwhile, the majority of new graduates cannot satisfy the requirements. Employers complain they have to retrain new graduates, including tones from top-tier universities.

When asked how the labor market will be in the future, Lan said that the 4.0 revolution will create big changes in the market.

In Vietnam, workers for the footwear and garment industries were in very high demand when investments in the industries exploded. However, in the 4.0 revolution era, enterprises won’t need a high number of worker, because robots can undertake many important tasks.

“A lot of new jobs require advanced technical skills. If students only study traditional subjects at school, they won’t be able to meet the needs of work,” Lan said, adding that  business fields related to technology will have high demand for workers.

“‘Technology related majors are understood as IT, nano technologies, biotechnology and sustainable agriculture,” she said. “And you don’t necessarily have to obtain bachelor’s degree to get a good job.”

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