Is a Malaysian Degree Still Worth It? The 92.5% Number Explained

How the 92.5% is made

The figure comes from the graduate tracer study. The ministry surveys you six months after you finish and asks, essentially, one thing: do you have a job? Any job. Working as a barista counts. Admin at your uncle's company counts. Driving Grab counts. Six months after you cross the stage with a mechanical engineering degree, if you are earning money doing literally anything, you are in the 92.5%.

It does not ask whether the degree got you the job, or whether you use it. It does not check again at year two or year five. And I am not the only one saying it is too narrow: Malaysian academics have published peer-reviewed work noting that the tracer study framework focuses on employment status and cannot capture long-term employability or the mismatch between what you studied and where you work.

The other number, from the same government

Same country, same year, different department. The Department of Statistics says 32.2% of Malaysian graduates are in skill-related underemployment, doing work that does not need their qualification. For graduates aged 24 and under, it is 59.8%, roughly two in three.

So: 92.5% employable, and around 60% of young graduates doing work that did not need the degree. Both numbers are correct. Only one of them is on the brochure. Malaysia had almost six million graduates in 2024, up 4.1% in a single year, and 1.72 million of them were in skill-related underemployment, up 2.4% on the year before. We are producing more graduates, and a growing share are in jobs that do not need the paper. Our underemployment research has the full picture.

Before anything else: pay your PTPTN

I know where videos like this usually go, and I am not going there. If you took a PTPTN loan, pay it back. I do not want to hear about abolishing or forgiving it. Somebody's tax money funded it, and your repayments fund the next student. It is a revolving fund. If you do not pay, another 17-year-old somewhere in Malaysia does not get to go.

And honestly, PTPTN charges around 1% a year on a reducing balance. That is some of the cheapest education money on the planet. Students in the UK and US pay far higher compounding rates. You get a grace period and can restructure repayments as a percentage of income. If you are not paying, that is on you.

This is not about the loan. It is about who received the money and what they owe you in return. PTPTN has disbursed tens of billions of ringgit to more than 4.2 million students. Almost all of it went straight to institutions as fees; you got a living allowance.

Nobody has skin in the game except you

Look at the deal. You borrow and carry it for 15 to 20 years. If the course leads nowhere, you carry that in your salary, your CV and the decade it takes to catch up. The university was paid up front and carries no risk on your outcome, not a single ringgit.

I run a business. If I sell you something and it does not work, you come back to me, and I fix it or refund you, or you tell everyone I am rubbish and I lose my next ten customers. That is what skin in the game means. It is the reason our own programme carries a money-back guarantee. Universities have a metric measured once, six months in, counting any job. That is not a scam; nobody broke the law. In a way it is worse: a system where nobody has a reason to fix anything.

Graduates in semi-skilled jobs, the underemployed ones, earn around RM2,550 a month on average. The median formal-sector wage was about RM3,167 at the end of 2025. Different years, so treat it as directional, but the shape is clear: a graduate in the wrong job can earn less than a typical worker, while carrying a loan for the privilege.

Arguing against myself: degrees do pay, on average

I do not want to be the person shouting that degrees are useless. Degree holders in Malaysia had a median salary of RM5,724 in 2024, against RM3,390 for diploma holders, and graduate unemployment was 3.2%. On average, the degree pays.

The degree is not the problem. The average is the problem. That RM5,724 median mixes two populations: graduates whose courses connect to real demand, and graduates sitting around RM2,550 wondering what happened. Nobody tells you which group you are joining before you sign.

One afternoon of research before a six-figure decision

If you are about to enrol, do not ask "will I get a job?". 92.5% do. Ask: will I get a job that actually requires this qualification?

Already in the 60%? Here is what to do

Your loan is not the emergency. At around 1%, it is the cheapest money you will ever get. Do not rush to clear it. Pay the minimum, take any salary-deduction discount, and stay off the arrears list, because arrears can hurt your home loan application later.

Then put your energy into the one thing that moves your number: a skill people will pay for, whether or not you went to university. And know what employers check. I look at a CV for maybe eight seconds. I am looking for evidence you can do the thing: something you built, shipped, with your name on it. CGPA is a claim, not evidence. Between a 3.9 with nothing I can look at and a 3.0 with three things I can open in a browser, I call the 3.0 every time. Most hiring managers in this country would say the same.

If you want that evidence to be software you built with AI, the free trial is the easiest way to start, and our guide to jobs that don't require a degree shows where skills can take you. For the deeper economics of why degrees are losing value, read paper inflation explained.