I refer to Arbibi Ashoy's letter Unemployed grad problem partly due to employers . In his letter, Arbibi stated that 'there is a correlation between unemployment and race' and that 'employers selected by criterion other then education level and experience'.

He goes on to state that: 'There is also a tendency for some employers to select according to language competency, especially Mandarin' implying that this is wrong.

My first question to his assertion would be to ask if he has any facts and figures from any independent studies to back up his statements, or are they merely his intuition?

Assuming that employers do select according to language competency, 'especially Mandarin', there is still nothing inherently wrong with that, as long as the particular language skill (or other capabilities and competencies) are relevant to that job.

Some employers even have language allowances to encourage their staff to acquire certain language skills so that they can better deal with their customers. With the growing economic power of China, doesn't it not make sense for businesses to require Mandarin language skills?

I know of one European company that was looking to outsource some IT work to someone in this part of the world, and one of the selection criteria was Chinese language skills, since this service provider must support their operations in China as well.

Of course, English language skills is also a given, since the medium of communication with the customer is English.

I agree with Arbibi entirely when he said that 'we must be honest with ourselves if we want to solve the present unemployed graduates situation'.

Employers, be they from the private or public sector, need to hire candidates on merit to provide superior service and to compete effectively in the increasingly global marketplace, and 'churning out better grads' would certainly help.