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[nomad soul]

KSA universities ‘not aligned with jobs market’
Arab News | 20 November 2014
Source: http://www.arabnews.com/featured/news/662676

JEDDAH//The Kingdom’s higher education institutions are failing to produce graduates to meet the requirements of the country’s labor market, according to a senior academic at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). Abdul-Fattah Mashat, KAU’s vice president for development, identified four areas that need to be addressed. “First we have a large number of graduates from theoretical faculties. Secondly, our science and applied departments accommodate too few students. Thirdly there is the high cost of setting up science departments, and fourthly there is a shortage of academics,” he said. He said that an additional problem is that there is not “accurate and detailed information on the needs of job market, not to mention that such needs are inconsistent.”

Mashat was speaking recently during the seventh and final session of the Jeddah Human Resources Forum. He said that communities must help universities identify solutions to labor issues. This can be done by educating the public on labor matters with lectures and seminars.

During the session, Mashat said universities face various challenges including rapid advances in technologies, rising levels of unemployment among graduates, the trend toward a knowledge society, the declining role of the government and private sectors, and the lack of alignment and harmonization between the higher education, labor and civil service ministries. He said graduates working in the private sector tend not to be loyal to their companies and do not master English. They also do not accept lower-level jobs, lack scientific expertise, have poor attendance records, lack seriousness and a sense of responsibility, have poor productivity and do not want to work morning and evening shifts. He said companies must also work with universities to determine which disciplines are important. “This will enable the labor market to participate in defining the outputs of education, and help higher education institutions to identify data to better understand the labor market.”

Naif Al-Roumi, undersecretary for planning and development at the Ministry of Education, said preparing students for the future is a big challenge for teachers and decision makers. He said 329,000 male and 427,000 female students are registered at schools this year. He said the world is facing a learning crisis. Surveys have found that one out of five pupils have not acquired the minimum level of basic skills in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. “The problem of poor-quality learning in the poorer parts of the world is increasing, with the costs amounting to $129 billion, equaling 10 percent of the global expenditure on primary learning. Both developing and advanced countries face this crisis,” he said.

(End of article)

[mashkif]

[plumpy nut]

[veiledsentiments]

To be honest, I don't think that many universities anywhere in the world do a very good job of preparing people for the job market. Even here in the US, I think their greatest success is keeping these young people out of the job market for a few years until they are a bit more mature. Then they end up learning on the job.

VS

[dustdevil]

Well, VS, that's a generalization with a ring of truth but is misleading as well. The regional state college I went to, for example, a good one but nonetheless fairly unknown outside a few northeastern states, had, the last time I looked, a 100% placement rate in at least one profession requiring a bachelor's in their particular field. Undergraduate college in the West is what you make it, even if you're a philosophy major at Jerkwater College in Duckweed, AK. (Well, let's put Arkansas aside, I'll grant you that.) Most Middle Eastern degrees are in essence fraudulent. Case in point: you do know who the adviser was for His Worshipfulness Sheikh Nayan's master's thesis, right? And he was Minister of Higher Ed! But even the western-run tertiary institutions in the Emirates are going downhill fast. KSA? Glad I work for the military--at least I get a retirement paid for.

[veiledsentiments]

The fact that people are "placed" doesn't prove that they know their field. Those employers then have to train them to do the actual job and many will fail and be fired. People with management degrees don't really know how to manage... lots of theory, but no practical knowledge until they actually do it... degree in Economics? What will you do in your job? Sociology? etc etc.

I will use one example that I know. At any US university, if you major in accounting, they basically teach you to pass the CPA exam which has absolutely no practical use for 70% of accounting graduates who don't take that exam but work in the field. During my first career in accounting, I spent a great deal of time teaching these people how to do their job.

CPAs - invariably the new hire, new grads - would show up every year to audit my work... but hadn't a clue as to what I did, how I did it, or why. So I had to teach them the basics of how to do the real work of accounting. I was constantly amazed at how clueless they were.

But it did provide years of teaching experience that I couldn't put on my CV. And an education degree isn't that different. You are tossed into a classroom hopefully knowing your field, but with just a few weeks of experience in your student teaching - often something completely different from what you taught (you student taught 6th grade and you get hired to do 1st grade). Sink or swim...

VS