CAIRO
- With the number of university graduates increasing annually in Egypt and the lack of suitable job opportunities for them, even among master's and doctoral holders sometimes, there is a renewed debate about the link between education and the labor market and the extent to which Egyptian youth are qualified with the skills necessary for modern job requirements, far from the economic causes of the unemployment crisis.
The latest waves of that controversy erupted, after President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi spoke in a recent speech about the lack of importance of some colleges to the labor market, and he specifically referred to the College of Arts, which graduates thousands of students every year who do not need the labor market, especially from the departments of history and geography, he said.
During the launch of the national project for the development of the Egyptian family, which took place at the end of last month, Sisi advised Egyptians, saying, "People should prepare their children for new technological jobs, instead of graduating thousands of students from faculties such as arts, who have no place in the labor market."
Al-Sisi’s criticism went beyond increasing the number of graduates from some colleges beyond the need, to criticizing the inadequacy of the levels of some graduates with the skills required of them, despite the existence of jobs looking for qualified graduates.
Al-Sisi pointed out that the government received 300,000 graduates for training in information technology and software, to qualify them for jobs with salaries of about $20,000, but only 111 of them passed the exams, he said.
#Al-Sisi advises parents to choose useful academic majors for their children.. He wondered, "Does the labor market need thousands of students who graduate from literature, history and geography?"
pic.twitter.com/MDyFfpY5mW
— Al Jazeera Egypt (@AJA_Egypt) March 1, 2022
Intermediate Qualification Programs
Many university graduates work in jobs that are not related to their qualifications, and a significant phrase has spread among job applicants, quoting employers, which is the need to “forget everything they learned in colleges,” and then start training operations that are not related to what they learned, this is in the case of my good Fortunate who work with their educational qualifications, such as the Faculty of Commerce.
As for those who have no place outside the government cabinet and private institutions, such as graduates of the departments of history and geography, they are absorbed by institutions that have nothing to do with their qualifications, often customer services or marketing companies.
Mahmoud, who is the owner of a marble factory in the 6th of October city, west of Cairo, says that he struggles to find trained and qualified workers, and when university-qualified people come to him, they demand higher salaries than those with intermediate qualifications (they study for 3 years after the preparatory stage) claiming that their educational level is higher.
There is no difference in the matter for him - as he told Al Jazeera Net - everyone is equal in craft and practical skills, calling on the government to provide intermediate qualification programs between university education and the real requirements of the labor market.
President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi issued a decree abolishing the Faculty of Arts and transforming the departments of geography, history, philosophy, psychology and languages into workshops to train and qualify students of these departments to master plumbing, debating, shaving, oysters and plastering tiles in order to keep pace with the labor market within the framework of his future vision for the new republic.
— Jamal Al-Din Al-Afghani (@HZpkhBw6ZBosKAz) March 1, 2022
Why the demand for colleges have no market?
According to the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (government), there are about 3.4 million students enrolled in higher education for the academic year 2020/2021, and theoretical colleges accounted for the largest number of them, such as the faculties of commerce, law and literature.
Egyptians are keen to enroll their children in what is known as the "top colleges", which include medical and engineering majors, in addition to political science and media, in order to provide suitable job opportunities after graduation, in addition to the social prestige they represent, but they encounter the obstacle of the coordination office responsible for distributing students according to For the high school group, where many students enter faculties and specializations according to their group and not their desires.
Nour Khaled says about the reasons for joining the History Department at the Faculty of Arts, despite her previous knowledge of her lack of a professional horizon, that she did not primarily want to study history or enroll in the Faculty of Arts, stressing that the coordination of admission to universities is what threw her into this department, as well as the case of about a thousand of her colleagues in the same The department is aware from the beginning that it has no future to work with its degree, knowing that the graduate of the department was previously working in the teaching profession.
She went on to talk to Al Jazeera Net by saying that she works on vacations and free time in the field of marketing products online, and that is equal to those who do not have a university qualification, but she continues to study in order to obtain a university degree, "hang it on the wall of the house in front of visitors", and then continue to work by marketing.
On a tour of Al-Jazeera Net, the reporter asked a number of "tactics" commanders and gas station workers about their qualifications. A large number of them answered that they hold university qualifications ranging from trade, rights, morals and social service. Abdullah, a worker at a fuel station, said that he was and still is. He hopes to find a job that matches his qualifications as a graduate of the Faculty of Commerce at Helwan University, and this old, suspensive hope is the reason why he went to study and then continued there.
Because this work stops, graduates will graduate from the literature of the history department, because this is part of the labor market of history literature.
What is it?
— Paper Notes (@mozakerat) February 28, 2022
But why do colleges not qualify graduates for the labor market?
An expert on educational systems and value development at Zagazig University, Muhammad Raafat, answers that the advantage of these graduates from those theoretical colleges is that they have the good specialized academic preparation, but they lack the necessary educational preparation to work in teaching with students of different ages, and it can be obtained by joining the colleges of education and training in them as a condition of study Good and in-depth.
The opportunities for these graduates are not lacking abroad, as is the case in Egypt, because some Arab countries, for example, have institutions that specialize in dealing with members of society and need those specializations, provided that the graduate is distinguished.
With the abundance of college graduates in general, Raafat confirms to Al Jazeera Net, that the solution is for students to absorb the lesson early and for each individual to go deeper in his specialization, and not pay attention to the crusts occupied by college professors, and he must be realistic, loyal to his knowledge and work, and innovative in it.
He expressed his belief that a large part of the labor and education dilemma for which he is primarily responsible is coordination between the state's administrative apparatus and the Ministry of Education, by determining the extent of the labor market's need and the state's future aspirations of the necessary disciplines.
# Al-Sisi
These state colleges must provide them with work and research spaces in a diverse and historically geographical country that has no equal. This is the state’s mission to provide laboratories and research centers for the disciplines, this is how countries are built with science pic.twitter.com/bkbYianMKc
— The Invisible (@wetwatelbrary) February 28, 2022
Labor market imbalances
For his part, Professor of Economics at the American University of Auckland, Mustafa Shaheen, believes that the imbalances in the labor market are not the main problem, which is represented in the ignorance of many of the nature of the labor market itself and what it needs, due to the presence of a large sector of the secret, marginal and unknown market for the government, although its impact became clear.
In his speech to Al-Jazeera Net, Shaheen said that it is important to count what is required of each profession, so that the government has knowledge of it, explaining that the issue is not in the rehabilitation of students but in education, as the craftsman in America sometimes has a higher income than a university teacher, because the market imposes its conditions, Which confirms the need to give signals for what we need.
Shaheen called for the need to activate this, in parallel with the need to change the society's view of the craftsman and the issue of work and its quality in general, with a plan for a complete reprogramming of the economy and knowledge of basic needs, which is what all countries of the world do.
The importance of geography however?
In turn, professor of geography at the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University, Atef Motamad, says that the presence of geography departments in Egyptian universities in their current state does not mean that geography is fine, stressing that closing geography departments in universities without a comprehensive national plan that takes all the important elements, anticipates the danger and provides alternatives, will increase the matter. Difficulty and confusion.
In a post on his Facebook page, Motamad considered that the disappearance of geography from the faculties of arts and education in universities would harm Egyptian national security.
He stressed the importance of studying geography and its benefit to the country, but if it was taught in a correct way, it would be based on renewed researchers, and if the state would keep them under the umbrella of material, intellectual, security and social protection, which would help them achieve a qualitative leap for this science.
He said that there must also be a geographical specialist in every local unit, and in every administration in the village, the countryside and the city, considering that the problem is not that there are no jobs that fit the geographer, the real problem is that they put people in his place who have nothing to do with the management of the place, which makes A geography student without a career.
I do not think that President Sisi’s recent words about graduates of the majors of history and geography - and implicitly with them most of the humanities and social sciences students in the faculties of arts in Egypt - bears an iota of disregard for these scientific disciplines, and their educational and cultural role in shaping the thought and personality of Egyptians.
https://t.co/SuhO5TbKr0
— Ahmed Omar (@omaraligg) March 3, 2022
stagnant water
In the same context, the academic specialist in philosophy, Ahmed Omar, says that he sometimes feels guilty about his students who teach philosophy to them, and pity them from the future;
Because he knows with certainty that 99% of them have entered the philosophy department against their will, as a result of the conditions of the internal coordination process in the college, and they are not psychologically and mentally qualified for that study, and for this specialty.
In an article about Sisi’s talk about history and geography graduates, Omar added, “Indeed, I sincerely pity myself as well, and I seriously want to change my field of work, when I think about the feasibility of my teaching work, and the feasibility of farming in semi-wasteful land, unprepared and not ready to benefit from the You present it to her, because it does not represent the slightest importance to her, with her potential, mental preparations, and future desires.
He expressed his hope that Sisi’s speech, which sparked a lot of controversy, threw a stone into the stagnant waters of the departments and disciplines of humanities and social sciences, and that it would be a catalyst for its loyal people to discuss its present crisis and future prospects, its relationship to the labor market, and its relationship to the problems and needs of society, the state, and national culture;
"This, in my opinion, is a priority and a scientific and national mission of the utmost importance," he said.