Lebanon suffering from a huge surplus in university graduates

The Arab Open University (AOU) organized yesterday its first ‘Higher Education and Labor Market’ conference under the patronage of labor minister Sajaan Azzi and the presence of the general director of the National Employment Office (NEO), Jean Abi Daher, former minister Khaled Kabbani and a number of public figures. Kabbani pointed out in his intervention that the global economy aided with the development of technology, has rapidly shifted into the so-called the economy of knowledge. Consequently, Kabbani expounded, this places greater responsibility on the various universities to improve their curricula and methods of teaching to better prepare their students in the lookout for jobs after graduation amidst a fierce competition in the employment world. Abi Fadel for his part stressed that the domestic labor market cannot accommodate one fourth of graduates every year, particularly that the a large proportion of the degrees they hold are not needed by employers. “We need to study the requirements of the labor market and develop relevant legislation that help attract investments, modernize the national educational system and develop small and medium enterprises,” Abi Fadel maintained. Meanwhile, LABORA president, Father Toni Khadra, said that while 70% of state jobs are vacant, the rate of successful applicants who sit for civil service board exams does not exceed 25%. Khadra noted that against the nearly 40 thousand students graduating annually from the different higher education institutions, only 9 thousand find jobs in the country or abroad. Similarly, AUB professor Dr Maamari, stressed the need for setting an inclusive national strategy that creates uniform standards for quality assurance and surveys the domestic and Arab labor market. Finally, AOU president Fairuz Farah Sarkis presented a study conducted by the university about the extent of satisfaction of employers in the alumni of the universities in Lebanon, and which indicated that the skills of graduates are run-of-the-mill generally. (Al Mustaqbal, June 9, 2016)