Developing and adapting university curricula with an eye towards employment

The Lebanese University School of Arts and Humanities-First Branch organized yesterday a conference entitled ‘The Labor Market and Education Curricula’ which aimed at discussing the quality of education and employment prospects available for students in diverse specialties. A number of participants focused on the new European LMD system, describing this educational system applied recently by the national university as a mere copy of the Western teaching system. Others, while maintaining that the curricula need to be regularly updated, also stressed the importance of adaptation to the national conditions and they remain in line with modern global teaching strategies as well as the demands of the labor market. To this effect, Dean Nabil Khatib, pointed out that the college is no longer just a place for students to indulge in theoretical courses. It also aims at equipping them to directly enter the labor market. In this framework he singled out some of the specialties in demand namely: proofreading, translation and simultaneous interpretation, the development of learning software for maps, etc. The conference devoted two sessions to discuss the linkages between the labor market and the disciplines of Arts and Humanities. In his lecture, "Mainstreaming the labor market with the humanities curriculum,” Dr. Ghassan Mrad stressed the importance of adapting the Arabic language as a vehicle for promoting knowledge, as well as of embracing modern scientific methods aided with sophisticated application techniques. For his part, Dr Khaled Mer3eb highlighted the wide gap in learning between the knowledge acquired by university graduates and the broader cultural inheritance. In the second session, Dr. Lina Beydun gave a lecture entitled: ‘Forging academic and vocational paths between academic disciplines’. (As Safir, December 17, 2015)