TUNISA: Initiatives tackle graduate unemployment

Tunisia has launched a plan to help university graduates face the challenges of finding a job in their own field. This is in a context of widespread unemployment and intense competition in a job market ravaged by the global economic crisis. Students also have few academic choices and university autonomy is limited.

Although Tunisian university graduates are academically prepared for the demands of their discipline, they face great challenges in finding a job in their own field, or have started working in fields unrelated to their discipline.

One of the reasons for this problem is that post-secondary students in Tunisia have limited academic choices. After successfully passing the baccalaureate, they submit university applications to the Ministry of Education, Higher Education and Scientific Research, specifying a selection of 10 fields that they would like to join. However, the ministry decides which field students will be placed in based on their school marks.

Tunisia's 759 university divisions prioritise disciplines with high employment rates.

Even so, this does not translate into adequate numbers of jobs available to graduates in these disciplines.

In this centrally controlled system, both students and universities have limited autonomy.

To contribute towards solving the problem and promoting awareness of market needs, the ministry has taken steps to help students pursue their career from the university to the job market.

It has created the National Centre for Student Orientation for 2010's successful baccalaureate university candidates and their parents. (The new academic year starts in October.)

Located at the Tunis Science City headquarters and operating from 15 July to 15 August, the national centre is providing information and answering questions about university orientation.

The ministry has also organised events to impart relevant information to new students: study skills, the job market, higher education institutions, the characteristics of academic divisions and the contents of their programmes, and university services in general. Participants at these events have included representatives of higher education institutions (public and private), university service offices, the Ministry of Vocational Training and Employment, and experts in media, orientation and counselling.

Further, Tunisia has renewed its commitment to making use of the skills of local university graduates.

And a conference was organised for 29 July to boost national development by harnessing the skills of Tunisian experts living abroad. The annual event, organised by the National Board of Tunisian Expatriates, aims to boost connections between the authorities, the local business sector and Tunisian experts residing abroad, the majority of whom live in France. Delegates stressed the need for deeper communication among the concerned parties, as well as channels for attracting specialist know-how to the domestic market.