This review examines how Malaysian vocational college bakery and pastry education can develop the competencies required for contemporary employment, entrepreneurship, and continued occupational learning. The evidence indicates a dual condition. Students are generally motivated and report strong employability, yet more specific studies identify moderate workplace skills, incomplete exposure to teamwork, leadership, technical, ethical, analytical, and problem-solving capabilities, and uneven readiness for digital transformation. The program’s strongest educational assets are hands-on practice, teacher demonstration, practical feedback, modular learning, and contact with industry. Its recurring weaknesses are a weak or episodic connection between curriculum and employers, insufficient laboratory resources and protected practice time, inconsistent assessment of authentic performance, and limited evidence about graduates’ actual employment and business outcomes. Transformation therefore should not mean simply adding digital tools to a recipe-based curriculum. It should connect occupational standards, bakery production, food safety, product development, costing, digital commerce, sustainability, halal assurance, and employability skills through authentic production and work-based learning. The most defensible reform model is cyclical: employers and educators jointly specify competencies, colleges provide repeated and well-resourced practice, assessment captures observable performance, and graduate and employer outcomes feed the next curriculum revision.
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