Analisis Status dan Penentu Daya Saing Pekerja dalam Sektor Pendidikan di Malaysia

The education sector in Malaysia is receiving special attention from the government to produce human capital that are competitive and meet the current needs of the economy. Malaysia has stressed the importance of education from preschool to university level. This is proven through substantial development fund allocated by the federal government to the education sector amounted more than 20.0% compared with other sectors. In the era of globalization, the demand for competent and efficient work force within this sector has increased dramatically to produce a larger number of competitive workers in the labour market. The main focus of this article is to measure the competitiveness of workers in the education sector. Analysis is based on 567 executives in the education sector in four states, viz., Selangor, Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Johor. The study shall compute the competitiveness index, the competency index as well as the performance index. Subsequently, these indexes are used as the dependent variable to examine the determinants of competitiveness such as human capital, personalities, individual ethics, customer satisfaction and working environment. The results show that the worker’s competitiveness in this sector is still at a moderate level. The study also showed that all variables have positive impacts on the worker’s competitiveness and the most important factor is the achievement of human capital among the workers.