Political manipulation undermines efforts for linking high education with markets needs

The Lebanese University School of Sciences, second branch, organized a conference entitled ‘Vocational Innovation and Development Challenges’ in an effort to promote the creation of new jobs for university students. The President of the Lebanese Industrialists Association, Fadi Gemayel, stressed the need to link higher education institutions with the labor market by linking talented graduates with the banking and industrial sector’s demand. Similarly, in his address to the students, the director of the Francophone University Agency (AUF), Pr. Herve Sabourin, urged them “to innovate and to carve a place for themselves in the presently very competitive labor world”.  For his part, the Education Minister, Elias Bou Saab indicated that the state-owned Lebanese University crisis is not the result of the lack of funds, but rather the outcome of the dominant bureaucratic system. The University should not be politically manipulated as is the case here in Lebanon, he stated. Turning to the head of the students committee, Bou Saab urged her to work in coordination with all the parties involved to carry out a successful new round of student elections and to protect the policies of LY from political allegiances, so as to bring about the much desired changes. (An Nahar, Al Mustaqbal, February 24, 2016)