Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

The available dataon the fields ofeducation, medicineand health sciences,engineering, andother fields suggesta shortage ofspecialised humancapital capableof meeting therequirements neededby Arab societiesThousands ofgraduates pourout of their highereducationalinstitutes with noreal employmentopportunities whiletheir domesticlabor marketslack graduates inmany importantspecialisationsneeds, and the consequent lack of criteriafor determining, for example, theirrelative need for agricultural engineersfor areas that can be utilised for plant orlivestock production, or their need forveterinarians and the like. In view of thegreat differences between Arab countriesin such matters, each country should beconsidered individually in terms of itsspecialisation needs. That said, the availableinformation on schools of agriculture inArab countries indicates that they offerinsufficient diversification to cover theirneeds for the diverse specialisations inagriculture and food production, and thatthey occupy a marginal position amonghigher educational institutions. Suchinformation leads one to believe thatagricultural production, in all its forms, isbased on traditional know-how rather thanmodern scientific knowledge.In general, one can only speculateas to whether higher education in Arabcountries can truly ensure the knowledgecapital needed to respond to the diverserequirements of development and theneeds of the labor market. Certainly, theavailable data on the fields of education,medicine and health sciences, engineering,and other fields suggest a shortage ofspecialised human capital capable ofmeeting the requirements needed by Arabsocieties to approach issues with a highdegree of intellectual acumen and to takedecisions based on in-depth knowledgeof the issue at hand. This is especiallytrue when they are compared to modernindustrialised countries in this regard.Furthermore, the imbalance in thedistribution of graduates over the variousspecialisations, 65 of which the socialsciences, law, and business administrationhold the virtually uncontested lead,suggests, in spite of the importance ofthese sciences, that the higher educationsystems are not conducive to thegeneration of the diverse types of qualifiedhuman capital Arab countries need tomanage and to develop their societies.Thousands of graduates pour out of theirhigher educational institutes with no realemployment opportunities while theirdomestic labor markets lack graduates inmany important specialisations.Qualifications of graduatesRare is the information from independentand reliable sources on the qualificationsof graduates from any educational levelin Arab countries. Generally, the availableinformation is restricted to the gradesawarded to students on the required subjectsin the curricula of the programmes fromwhich they graduated, which, in turn, begsmany questions as to how and on whatbasis these grades are awarded (UNDP,2007b, in Arabic).Perhaps the best project in this domainis that conducted by the UNDP RegionalBureau for Arab states in cooperationwith the UNESCO Regional Bureau forEducation in the Arab states. The projectstudied large samples of graduates frombusiness administration and computerscience university programmes in manyArab countries on the basis of standardisedtests. Table 3-3 shows the total results forstudents tested in business administrationin Arab universities. Table 3-4 shows theresults for the computer science test. Bothtables compare the results with those oftheir counterparts in universities in theUSA.If we lump the grade rankings intothree categories, we find that businessadministration students from Arabcountries on the point of graduating rangeas follows: 41 per cent failed or performedpoorly, which is a very high ratio by anystandard; 47 per cent had acceptable orgood marks; and 12 per cent rated verygood or excellent. In the USA, 15 per centof those tested performed poorly (aboutthree times less than their counterparts inArab countries) and none failed, 61 percent had pass or good marks, and 24 percent (or more than double) ranked verygood or excellent.Thus, while there do exist students inArab countries in the higher performancecategories, they are exceptions to the116 ARAB KNOWLEDGE REPORT 2009