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07/10/2010 - Issue 41
Minding the education gap
by Hamzeh Abu-Fakher
With the efforts of Shabab Project, SKILLS, and a pioneer student counseling division at the University of Kalamoon, graduates can now hone their theoretical studies with necessary market know-how.
Photography by Carole al-Farah
In today's world, education is becoming one of the biggest competition fields. Nations are built and run solely by minds, mostly a result of their education system. However, with the fast evolution and shifting of technologies and global values, Syria is having problems keeping up through its outdated curriculums, finding its new generation of graduates a burden instead of a relief. But thanks to a number of programs around the country, efforts are being exerted to bridge the gap between third level education and the job market.
The education system in Syria puts more emphasis on theoretical knowledge than on the practical, deeming students incompetent and inept in the real practical field of their studies. Students from the start are force-fed material which is unusable in the labor market, resulting in them being added as numbers to the Central Bureau of Statistic’s unemployment records.
According to Dania Achi, Communications Manager of Shabab (part of Syria Trust for Development), “The main challenge is the lack of skills [fresh graduates suffer from], because the education system in Syria is theoretical and not practical. Graduates think they can work directly upon completion of their studies but they lack the qualifications required, even the basic ones, such as English language and computer/internet skills.”
Shabab was specifically founded within the Syria Trust to furnish young school students with necessary skills that help them launch their careers, or at least choose educational streams that will one day lead them into a career that corresponds with their abilities and inclinations. One key goal of Shabab is to “encourage young Syrians to enter the business world,” as well as “create a positive impression of business amongst Syrian society.” Both vision statements reveal a lot about the challenges facing work force development in the country.
“Students are ignorant of the steps of progression in the hierarchy of their fields; they think they should start as managers immediately,” Achi told Forward Magazine in a recent interview. As a leader in her institution, she believes students “should know that attaining their university certificates is only the first step, and that working imbues them with certain skills necessary for higher positions in their vocations, such as decision making, time management, research, and team cooperation.”
On the other hand, Rana Shanawani, Chief Executive Officer of BIDAYA, an institute sponsoring young entrepreneurs, commented on fresh graduates by saying, “It is really hard to find young graduates who are skilled and can speak English, and those found – even without experience – unfortunately expect to be overpaid. This is a result of a deficit caused by the public education system, which is way too inferior to corresponding systems in neighboring countries.”
Nonetheless, not only are fresh gradates lacking skills, this is found to be a characteristic of many employees in different positions, including managerial; they might’ve excelled in their time, though obviously, they couldn’t keep up with the fast movement of the market. This stems from the companies’ lack of further training for their employees after hiring, and adaptation to new trends in the market.
Role of Private Companies
With private companies suffering shortages in qualified candidates applying for their vacancies, they should come to realize that some of the responsibility of training and qualifying the workforce also falls upon their shoulders.
Many market observers say private companies do not comprehend the importance of providing opportunities for young graduates, such as internships or a campus presence; “to an extent these are remote concepts in Syria,” according to a recent repatriate. Since HR managers usually prefer to hire staff from the inside, or those who are already working, they might as well visit campuses, pick students, provide them with internships, and then hire the individuals who correspond to their definition of a good employee.
Another institution that has sensed the need for imbuing graduates with practical education is SKILLS, a mini business school of the Syrian Enterprise and Business Centre (SEBC), a project that aims at “providing the business community with professionals [and] help them perform their jobs efficiently and professionally.”
According to Rasha Faek, Press and Media Officer at SEBC – SKILLS, “We need to connect private companies to students. They should understand the benefits of providing internships. Training interns do not require a lot of resources, but it yields the best results. It is better to hire staff that you’ve already tested.”
Supply/demand-oriented education
Syria is a transforming economy, and currently many multinational corporations are starting to invest here, but they require a lot of skills that they cannot find locally, having them resort to foreign staff for their sensitive positions.
As required in any field, a balance between supply and demand is required for success, and this includes the education field. So naturally education bodies are required to focus on majors and fields that are required by the current market, and ignoring that results in many unemployed graduates, and in a shortage of labor for the market. This may be contributed to many factors, including social and governmental.
Hani Tarabishi, a professor at the University of Kalamoon said, “Students don’t really get into what they want to study or what they can succeed at, they select majors which are socially acceptable pressured by their families and communities, whose times did not include terms such as ‘humans resources’ or ‘public relations,’ they are part of feeding the huge gap between the output of college faculties and market labor demands.”
Taking this a bit further, scrutinizing the cut off lists for admissions you’ll find that some faculties have very high score expectations, such as for engineering and medicine. Compared to the creative sector, which has the lowest scores requirements, one can see the trend of “looking down at” creative fields. This said, the creative sector, though under-supported in Syria, makes up for 8% of UK’s GDP, but zero in Syria’s.
“We need a market driven education, for that we must have flexibility and freedom in our curriculums.
Unfortunately though, updating any curriculum takes a lot of effort and time through the current set of regulations, which should be updated as well,” added Tarabishi, who is currently providing graduating students with counseling aimed at helping them land suitable jobs in the market place. Such a supervisory role is almost non-existent in other academic institutions around the country, which explains the blindfold that many students metaphorically wear as they enter completely unfamiliar terrain.
Society’s Role
New businesses in Syria think we should look at the main purposes of education before giving out the final verdict. As many modern education figures see it, education is meant to teach and raise students. It is not excluded to its educational responsibilities, though, but to its societal ones as well.
Education is not the amount of information that is put into your brain sitting there undigested all your life. It should be character-building and life-making; assimilating fine ideas to nurture a young personage for a brighter future, many education visionaries believe.
Lately that has been realized in many educational institutions around the world through adding EQ (emotional quotient) tests to IQ tests (intelligence quotient), in assessing the mental and emotional processes that qualify students for a certain course of study or career.
Modern educators believe classrooms should act as mediums of interaction between two generations with knowledge and experience being passed, also a medium of interaction between the two sexes for a future existence in harmony and respect. Practicality and relating everything learnt in the classroom with day-to-day experiences undergone by the students is the requisite of an education system, which today is most certainly missing in Syria.
