New approach needed to tackle employability problem

Career counselling in higher education aims to provide students with experiential learning opportunities during and after their coursework. This includes internships, seminars, workshops, professional development programmes and fellowships.

Today, more than ever, universities view career counselling as a valuable service that promotes lifelong learning and provides career and employment guidance for their students, helping them to stay current with emerging occupational patterns and enhancing their future career prospects.

In the higher education arena, the relationship between career counselling and employment is an inseparable one in that it provides students with practical learning opportunities and connects them with potential employers who could significantly impact their career trajectories after graduation.

Providing students with hands-on experiences and experiential learning opportunities not only enhances their understanding of what they are studying, but also develops their skills and prepares them to be successful employees in various work environments.

Employment, income and status have traditionally been viewed as the product of higher education.

Unfortunately, in Egypt, the reality is that this has not always been the case because higher education is not geared towards equipping students with 21st century employability skills. Although higher education is considered a means for social mobility, students in Egypt face major difficulties that prevent them from attaining its benefits, such as low employment opportunities, highly competitive job markets and workplace skill gaps.

This is due in part to the fact that public universities in Egypt do not offer students the skills they need to be successful workers in the global 21st century marketplace. Today, the importance of English literacy and information and communications technology (ICT) skills remain underestimated in Egypt’s higher education institutions, with curricula emphasising rote memorisation instead of the practical application of knowledge.

This is problematic in the sense that it creates a large workforce that lacks the knowledge and technical expertise that the market demands.

Developing job skills and enhancing employability

In today’s fast-paced evolving world, employability requirements and workplace demands are constantly changing. Therefore, to improve students’ employability in highly competitive job markets, a major shift in career counselling programmes needs to occur if colleges and universities are to reduce unemployment and contribute to students’ success.

More importantly, higher education institutions should realise that career counselling needs to be able to “prepare students to successfully transition to the next level, whether it is a college or university, a community college, a technical institution, or a job. Also, students will need to have the skills and competencies required for the option they choose,” according to Kenneth and Judith Hughey’s 1999 paper “Preparing students for the future: Making career development a priority”

Driven by the evolution of ICT and globalisation, English literacy and ICT skills are essential for graduates trying to find a job in Egypt. In 2010, job vacancies in Egypt that require ICT proficiency and foreign language skills increased by 90%, according to the World Bank. On the one hand, this can be attributed to the Egyptian government’s electronic government initiative and, on the other, to the globalisation of the workplace.

In an effort to equip students with sufficient employment skills, the Egyptian government embarked upon a major reform initiative, the 2007 Higher Education Enhancement Project.

Although the Ministry of Education has taken bold steps to enhance the quality of education at public higher education institutions, research indicates that universities still offer irrelevant courses and have failed to update their curriculum and teaching practices to ones that incorporate recent developments in all scientific fields.

As a result, public universities in Egypt are not only creating an abundance of unqualified workers, but also undermining the national economy by fuelling unemployment. For example, in the third quarter of 2013 total unemployment rates in Egypt reached 13.4%. More specifically, one third of the unemployed individuals were university graduates, with women graduates being almost twice as likely to be unemployed as male graduates.

In an attempt to investigate the relationship between education and graduate employment, a 2017 study by Heba Nassar and Marwa Biltagy that examined the link between education, employment and poverty found that 12.9% of the total workforce were unemployed with rates being the highest in underprivileged areas like rural Upper Egypt where higher education is undervalued and underfunded by local authorities.

More importantly, the findings from the study showed that the majority of the unemployed were young people in the 15 to 29 year age group who were seeking a job for the first time.

In order to reduce current graduate unemployment rates, improve students’ career prospects and develop their employability skills, career counselling services at colleges and universities in Egypt need to:

• • Launch awareness campaigns on the importance of experiential learning in today’s demanding job market.
  
  
• • Provide students with classroom-based and field-based experiential learning opportunities.
  
  
• • Partner with professional organisations to provide students with internships that are conducive to the practical application of knowledge.
  
  
• • Organise résumé boot camps every semester to connect students with potential employers.
  
  
• • Pressure local authorities into taking action against employers who refuse to increase their annual intake of interns.
  
  
• • Conduct professional development programmes for faculty and staff on the importance of practical learning and how bringing theory to practice improves students’ employability skills.
  
  
• • Constantly monitor the job market and report new employment requirements to schools and universities.
  
  
• • Evaluate students’ ICT proficiency and foreign language skills. Students who lack essential technical expertise should sit for extra courses and workshops.
  
  
• • Collaborate with the Ministry of Education to incorporate situated learning in college preparatory programmes.
  
  
• • Support the integration of active experimentation, concrete experience, reflective observation and idea development into higher education curricula.
  

Egypt Vision 2030

Given the Egyptian’s government emphasis on reducing unemployment rates among youth and the concomitant need to have a professional workforce that contributes to the enhancement of the economy, career counsellors and other student affairs professionals are required to explore new routes that transform outdated instruction methods into modern teaching practices that engage students as active learners and provide them with hands-on learning opportunities.

Today, Egypt is in the midst of an ambitious plan that aims to transform the country into a fully sustainable nation: Egypt Vision 2030.

In order to realise this vision, policy-makers and educational leaders should (a) formulate context-specific policies that aim to address current high graduate unemployment rates, (b) further investigate topics pertaining to graduates’ career success, and (c) expand educational opportunities for socio-economically disadvantaged populations in underprivileged areas such as rural Upper Egypt.

Failure to respond to this pressing issue will not only increase poverty rates and jeopardise Egypt’s vision of a prosperous future, but also shatter the dreams of young Egyptians who believe that education is a means for social mobility, the key to success in life and a remedy for past civic injustices.

Ibrahim M Karkouti is assistant professor of educational leadership at the Graduate School of Education, the American University in Cairo, Egypt.