Social Entrepreneurship and Resilience among Public University Students in Malaysia

The purpose of this article is to explore the incidence and the characteristics of over- and underskilled workers in Malaysia across the four Labour Force Survey (LFS) period – 2003, 2006, 2009 and 2012. Using the 1998 and 2008 Malaysia Standard Classification of Occupation (MASCO) of job analysis, of the total 164,896 workers, 66.4%, 13.5% and 20% respectively were classified as adequately-matched, overskilled and underskilled workers. Across year, the incidence of overskilling was lower in 2003 than the rest, around 12%. Underskilled workers were found to be higher than the average level in 2009 (24%) and 2012 (22%). There was no gender difference with respect to overskilled. For underskilled, the incidence was higher (lower) for male (female). Further exploration suggests that being more educated, male, young cohort, Malay ethnic increased the risk of being overskilled whereas underskilled workers were more prone for less educated people, female, non-Malay ethnics and older cohort. It was also considerable variations in overskilling and underskilling with respect to stratum, region, occupation levels, employment status and sector. These findings suggest that mismatch phenomenon seems prolong in the labour market and improving economic performance would reduce the incidence among workers.Social entrepreneurship is given much emphasis by the Ministry of Education Malaysia as one of the entrepreneurship programs for university students. A social entrepreneurship program that draws large participation from all Malaysian public university students is Entrepreneurship Act Us (ENACTUS). ENACTUS is seen as an authentic form of education that could provide students with the opportunity to hone their social entrepreneurial skills and self-resiliency through the community service based projects. The main attempt of this study is to identify the dimensions of social entrepreneurship and resilience among public university students in Malaysia, who are active participants in ENACTUS. Social entrepreneurship dimension in this study consists of sociality, innovation and market orientation; while resilience dimension encompasses resilience to stress, adversity and risk. A sample of 341 active participants in ENACTUS program was selected using stratified random sampling. Questionnaires were used as the main instrument to collect data and the data obtained was analyzed statistically. Overall, the level of social entrepreneurship and resilience among public university students in the ENACTUS program were found to be at high level. The result shows a strong positive correlation between social entrepreneurship and resilience with the Pearson coefficient value of 0.53. This study reveals that social entrepreneurship education program has a significant role in improving the resilience among public university students. Thus, the Minister of Education in Malaysia should encourage greater participation of university students in social entrepreneurship programs to strengthen their resilience towards stress, adversity and risk.