By Brendon Beliku
Brendon Beliku is a corporate immigration and employment compliance professional based in Kota Kinabalu. He writes independently on Sabah’s economic governance, labour market policy, regulatory affairs, logistics, transport and KDMR empowerment.
-Rethinking TVET Success-
KOTA KINABALU: Sabah’s greatest Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) challenge is no longer producing employable graduates.
It is developing talent capable of remaining competitive, retaining long term value and succeeding within an increasingly global workforce.
For years, the success of Sabah’s TVET ecosystem has been measured largely by one indicator: “graduate employability”. By that measure, Malaysia’s TVET reforms have been genuinely impressive.
National graduate employability has reached 95.9 percent, while more than half of SPM school leavers now identify TVET as their preferred pathway after secondary education.
These are significant achievements, reflecting years of deliberate policy reform under the Thirteenth Malaysia Plan (RMK13) and the Sabah Maju Jaya development agenda.
Nevertheless, employability measures only the beginning of a workforce journey rather than its long term competitiveness.
The more consequential question is no longer whether graduates secure employment. It is whether they remain competitive, continue developing their capabilities and choose to build their careers in Sabah within an increasingly global labour market.
-Retention is More Than Keeping Talent-
Equally important is the question of talent retention. In 2026,
Sabah reinforced its commitment to workforce development by allocating RM164.01 million under RMK13 to strengthen human capital through TVET, STEM, digital technology and skills development.
This reflects an important reality: “developing talent and sustaining talent are not the same”. Every investment in human capital should therefore be matched by an equally deliberate effort to create industries capable of retaining that talent through meaningful career progression, competitive remuneration, continuous professional development and opportunities for innovation.
Professionals should remain free to pursue opportunities wherever their expertise is most valued. International experience frequently strengthens technical capability, expands professional networks and exposes individuals to technologies, management systems and business cultures that may not yet exist locally. The distinction that matters is why talent moves.
Mobility driven by professional growth strengthens human capital. Mobility driven by economic necessity gradually weakens it.
Taiwan offers an instructive example. During the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of highly skilled Taiwanese left to study and work abroad, raising concerns over a growing brain drain.
Rather than attempting to prevent outward mobility, Taiwan strengthened domestic opportunities through industrial development, research investment and technology ecosystems, encouraging many experienced professionals to return.
Their international expertise subsequently became one of the catalysts behind Taiwan’s globally competitive high technology sector. Sabah should therefore view talent mobility not as a problem to eliminate, but as a strategic asset to cultivate, provided its economy remains capable of attracting that talent home.
The former reflects a Sabahan engineer accepting a regional assignment to develop specialist expertise before eventually returning home.
The latter reflects a technician leaving because comparable opportunities simply do not exist within the local economy.
Talent retention, properly understood, is therefore not about preventing people from leaving Sabah, it is about creating sufficient opportunities for skilled individuals to choose to remain, or equally, to return after acquiring valuable international experience.
-Preparing Talent for A Global Workforce-
The objective of Sabah’s TVET ecosystem should therefore extend beyond preparing graduates for local employment. It should prepare graduates for a global workforce.
Today’s engineers, technicians, project managers, automation specialists and advanced manufacturing professionals increasingly work across multinational corporations, cross border projects and international supply chains.
Technical competence remains essential. On its own, however, it is no longer sufficient.
Graduates must therefore develop more than technical competency. Professional communication, technological literacy, adaptability, regulatory awareness and the ability to operate confidently within international business environments have become competitive advantages rather than supplementary skills.
Graduates must develop more than technical competency. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies technological literacy, resilience and lifelong learning as among the fastest growing capabilities, reinforcing that workforce competitiveness increasingly depends on skills extending beyond technical expertise alone.
There is also an investment dimension that deserves greater attention.
Businesses evaluating where to establish operations increasingly assess workforce quality alongside infrastructure, regulatory certainty and ease of doing business. The availability of globally competitive talent has become a strategic investment consideration rather than merely an education outcome.
Preparing talent for global opportunities should therefore not be interpreted as exporting workers. Rather, it strengthens Sabah’s overall economic proposition by demonstrating that its workforce can compete confidently within regional and international markets while remaining an attractive destination for higher value investment.
-Building A Talent Ecosystem-
Achieving these outcomes requires a broader understanding of TVET itself. TVET should no longer be viewed solely as an education policy. Increasingly, it should be recognised as a workforce strategy.
Educational institutions, industry, employers and government must work collaboratively to anticipate future skills demands rather than responding only after shortages emerge.
Malaysia’s own reforms already demonstrate the value of this approach. Work based learning has consistently improved employability by positioning employers as active partners in competency development rather than recruiters at the end of the education pipeline. Success should therefore be measured more comprehensively.
Graduate employment remains an important indicator, but it should be complemented by career progression, professional certification, industry retention, productivity, wage growth and international employability.
Together, these measures provide a more meaningful assessment of whether TVET is developing sustainable workforce capability rather than simply producing favourable employment statistics.
Ultimately, Sabah’s competitive advantage will not be determined solely by the number of TVET graduates it produces, but by the long term value they continue creating throughout their careers.
Employability opens the first door, while retention and global competitiveness sustain resilience. The challenge is therefore no longer producing skilled workers.
It is building a talent ecosystem that develops, retains and attracts talent home, ensuring Sabah possesses not only a skilled workforce, but one capable of supporting sustainable economic growth in an increasingly regional, digital and interconnected economy.
