Self Employment : The possibility to Reduce Unemployment for New Graduates in Economics.

Abstract

One of the problems, Thailand is facing at present, is the problem of rising unemployment. The improvement of labour force quality and job promotion are believed to be the means of curing. This problem thus gaining increasing attention from various agencies concerned. Education is the process of increasing labour productivity which the tertiary level is regarded as an advance process. However tertiary education is expensive and unemployed graduates are costly and a waste of resources. Thus universities should search into the new paradigm of not only concentrating on quantity of graduates but also quality. Universities should no longer be a place of producing organization man, molded into government bureaucracy and private organization, but a place that produces people who can create jobs through self-employment. This study aims to find out whether economic study, which is the most relevant, could improve the ability of graduates to engage in self-employment, paying particular attention to the graduates from the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration in Kasetsart University, Bangkok. The study is based on primary and secondary data. The first part presents the overview of the education management and the state of the unemployment problem. It also advocates the universities in the past proceed only to achieve the physical development, establishing new departments and disciplines, answering to the increasing and from the increasing population, less concern is placed on an employment issue. Self-employment is the mew alternative worth to be further explored. Education for self-employment will lessen the magnitude of the unemployment as well as generate more jobs. The second part is based on the primary data collected from the faculty alumni through postal questionnaires. Basing on responded 500 observation, it is found that 43.6 percent are unemployed, 63.8 percent are employed in private and public organizations, only 22.6 are self-employed despite the 83.4 percent that desire to be self-employed. Basing on the observations opinion, it is found that the success of self-employment depends on personal ability and experiences which could be trained through new educational management emphasizing on ability to think and do things not just the ability to memorize things. This “new” education must consist of educational activities and activities that reinforce and improve the experiences of becoming self-employed, equip students with the ability to create their own jobs and generate jobs for others. This “new” education is believed to be helpful to the employment issue of the country.