Funding boost for higher education quality project

The World Bank will provide Yemen with a grant of US$3 million to improve higher education programmes in order to boost the employability of university graduates.

According to Dr Lianqin Wang, a World Bank senior education specialist, the funds will be channelled through the higher education quality improvement project for Yemen, an initiative that was started in 2010 to stem the deterioration of quality in tertiary education.

“This project is meant to bring change to higher education in Yemen. It is particularly expected to help students to gain experience to enter competitive labour markets,” said
Wang, during the confirmation of the grant in Washington on 15 September.

The grant is expected to target improving academic programmes in public universities such as Aden University, Dhamar University, Hadhramout University of Science and Technology, Sana’a University and University of Taiz.

Specifically, most of the funding will be used to procure scientific laboratory equipment and technical tools.

The project is also targeting institutional capacity building in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, and helping Taiz University to develop its governance management structure in order to enhance accountability.

According to Wael Zakout, the World Bank’s Yemen country manager, the project also has a quality assurance component, whose objective is to support activities that will enhance the creation of high quality courses and graduate competencies.

“Although higher education is the cornerstone for developing a country’s human capital and contributing to economic growth, to be effective there is need for university programmes to be aligned with the labour market, equipping university graduates with the knowledge and skills to compete in those markets,” said Zakout in a statement.

He stressed that there is urgent need to develop and design a demand-driven curriculum, in response to complaints from employers about the lack of practical experience and skills among university graduates.

Rapid higher education expansion

The crux of the matter is that in the last 10 years, higher education in Yemen has been driven by private universities and ‘parallel’ programmes in public universities.

According to the Joint Social and Economic Assessment for the Republic of Yemen – a joint report of the World Bank, European Union, United Nations and Islamic Development Bank – rapid expansion has contributed to poor quality and relevance of the higher education sector.

“In particular, the expansion of parallel programmes has caused a severe deterioration that has led to poor quality of many degree programmes,” says the report.

Given the demand for higher education, public universities began to accept onto ‘parallel’ courses fee-paying students who did not qualify for regular programmes.

According to the report, students in parallel programmes have fewer teaching and learning materials available to them as most facilities on campus are closed in the afternoons, resulting in high repetition rates.

“But despite the poor quality of education offered in parallel programmes, about 15% of university students in Yemen public universities are in those units,” says the report.

It is estimated that tertiary education enrolments in Yemen rocketed from 190,000 students in 2003 to a current 300,000 students. The explosive growth has resulted in overcrowded classrooms, staff shortages and limited resources in terms of core educational materials, laboratory equipment and other learning resources.

Limited and unbalanced programme offerings in public universities have created an excess supply of graduates in social sciences, and a shortage of science and technology graduates, which makes it difficult to meet the country’s skilled labour needs to drive the economy.

Apart from lack of competitiveness among Yemeni university graduates, enrolment in universities is highly skewed in favour of men. Despite modest increases in participation over the last 10 years, women are vastly under-represented in higher education with a gross enrolment ratio of 8% compared to 18% for men.

But even as the current World Bank project moves to make Yemen’s graduates more competitive in the labour market, there is urgent need for the government to redress the existing low qualification levels of academic staff, poor work environments and limited professional opportunities for academics in public universities.