Give tax relief to ease E&E talent crunch, says Penang’s investment chief

 

InvestPenang CEO Loo Lee Lian says two public universities in Penang have fewer than 1,000 electrical and electronics students and are operating below capacity.

GEORGE TOWN: Penang’s investment chief, Loo Lee Lian, has asked the government to incentivise parents to push their children to take up the sciences, as more upper secondary school students decide against opting for the science stream.

The head of InvestPenang said tax relief for parents of secondary school students in the science stream and students pursuing engineering degrees could help produce more graduates in the field.

She also said relief should be given to parents who send their children to approved maths or science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related classes.

Loo claimed that many secondary school students are choosing not to continue their upper secondary education – in Form Four and Five – and that in Penang alone, 18.5% of students decide to drop out early.

Loo Lee Lian.

Also troubling is a drop of students in the upper secondary science stream, she said.

“We call for this downtrend to be arrested. We must double our engineering graduates by 2030 to meet market demand,” she said in a talk here.

“The finance ministry should consider tax relief for parents who send their children to engineering courses in universities, and for parents whose children elect to take the pure sciences in upper secondary school.”

Citing education ministry data, Loo said the share of science stream students had dropped from 28.9% in 2013 to 19.5% nationally last year.

There has been a 38% drop in Penang alone, a staggering number as the state is a hub for many electronics factories in need of engineers, she said.

“These numbers are for Penang, but we suspect they are also shrinking at the national level,” she said.

Loo said two public universities in Penang have fewer than 1,000 electrical and electronics (E&E) students and are operating below capacity.

She said the 16 public universities nationwide offering E&E-related courses have enrolled a total of about 18,000 students, but that only a handful of universities have more than 2,000 such students each.

In contrast, Vietnam has been producing a substantial number of graduates in the field, boasting over 57,000 graduates from more than 300 universities and educational centres dedicated to information technology and engineering disciplines.

Earlier this year, The Edge reported international trade and industry minister Tengku Zafrul Aziz as saying there was a shortage of 50,000 engineers in the E&E field, with local universities only producing 5,000 engineering graduates a year.

The Malaysia Semiconductor Industry Association also sounded the alarm last year on the talent shortage, saying many electronics factories were struggling to hire new engineers.

The trade group said this was due to the declining number of students pursuing science and engineering, and the brain drain to other countries, among others. - FMT