Media coverage
Ma'an News Agency · 2022-07-05
A Ma'an News Agency item on a PalThink dialogue session on the gap between higher-education outputs and labour-market requirements, held with Germany's IFA under the PalThink Academy for Democracy and Human Rights, with Bahjat al-Helou of the Independent Commission for Human Rights among the speakers.
A Ma'an News Agency item on a PalThink dialogue session on the gap between higher-education outputs and labour-market requirements, held with Germany's IFA under the PalThink Academy for Democracy and Human Rights, with Bahjat al-Helou of the Independent Commission for Human Rights among the speake…
Gaza - Ma’an - PalThink dedicated a dialogue meeting to discussing the right to education, in partnership with the German institution (IFA), titled “The Gap Between Higher Education Outputs and Labor Market Requirements,” as part of the “PalThink Academy for Democracy and Human Rights” project, attended by dozens of leading jurists, experts, researchers, and representatives of civil society from inside and outside the Gaza Strip.
The institution’s director, Omar Shaban, said that “PalThink is a genuinely independent Palestinian institution that constantly seeks to bring about change in society and advance it on various levels with our limited resources, through presenting and discussing new ideas and hosting new experts from the Gaza Strip and beyond.” He pointed out that the subject of the session is both old and new at the same time, but must be approached from new angles, especially since there are 86,000 Tawjihi students this year alone, who need at least 40,000 jobs and 40,000 apartments, asking, “How much of that is available?” He concluded by saying: “Unemployment is the mother of all evils and the cause of all crimes because it erases the essence of the human being, and decision-makers are responsible for the existing reality alongside the occupation, its suffocating blockade, and its ongoing wars on the Strip.”
For his part, Mr. Bahjat al-Hilu, Coordinator of Awareness and Training at the Independent Commission for Human Rights, said that the rights to work and education in Palestine are in continuous decline, although most international conventions address them, and despite the fact that the United Nations included education among its 2030 development goals. He explained that several standards must be met in the right to education, such as geographical and physical accessibility to education, rejection of discrimination, adapting educational buildings for persons with special needs, and adaptation to the educational process. Al-Hilu added that “the decree-law that granted the Ministry of Education the right to collect donations in schools constitutes a serious violation of the principle of free education; schools have begun collecting money under the term donations.” He indicated that sufficient official budgeting has been absent for nine public universities that accommodate 79% of students, and that only 17% of the budget is allocated to educational development, of which 87% goes to salaries and wages. He stressed that the right to work is among the rights violated on a wide scale among young people, and al-Hilu recommended the need to combat discrimination and create effective budgets, and drew the attention of decision-makers to take into account data on the unemployed that are not statistically classified.
In turn, economic expert Abdullah Abu al-Hunud said that the arbitrary management of Palestinian economic resources and the division helped Israel control the Palestinian economy, something clearly reflected in the major imbalance in the trade balance after the Al-Aqsa Intifada, which increased after the division, so that Gaza’s exports came to constitute 1% of Palestine’s total exports, while its imports constituted 14% of total imports. Accordingly, per capita income in the Gaza Strip became $300 annually compared with $1,100 in the West Bank.
He explained that the International Labour Organization classified the labor market in Gaza as the worst in the world because of its inability to generate sufficient job opportunities relative to the population by 82%, which raised its unemployment rate to 47% compared with 16% in the West Bank.
He added: “The percentage of youth working in the informal economy is 53%, meaning that 111,000 receive salaries below the minimum wage, and that 35,000 young people have emigrated and not returned,” stressing at the same time the large gap between theoretical study in universities and the needs of the labor market.
As for Dr. Mahmoud Assaf, Assistant Professor of Educational Planning, he said that higher education institutions are making modest efforts to achieve development, but that the state of “unfair” competition is graduating students who are not creative and who only seek to obtain a university degree without real scientific and practical experience. He indicated that states invest in higher education so that it yields a financial return to the state in the future, or because it is important for national security, and some people pursue higher degrees in order to have social value, whereas the goal of higher education in Gaza is amorphous and unknown.
Assaf added: “Everyone is a partner in this situation, beginning with the official, passing through higher education institutions and university professors, and ending with the students, and this is what has encouraged universities to practice austerity at the expense of the quality of education.” He recommended that universities reconsider their student admissions policy, that the Ministry of Education tighten the selection of university teaching staff, and that the government finance technical education for a certain period of time to encourage enrollment in it.
During the closing remarks, Ms. Walaa al-Hayek, Projects Coordinator of the University Graduates Society in the Gaza Strip, said that business incubators are an important tool for developing entrepreneurial ideas and contribute to the establishment of small enterprises that disseminate knowledge, combat unemployment, and provide real job opportunities, especially for the marginalized. She explained that Palestine includes six incubators in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which work to host small projects in order to qualify them for entry into the market. She stressed the importance of incubators in society because they combat unemployment, improve quality of life, train the workforce, raise welfare, and reduce crime.
The attendees’ interventions revolved around the impact of the division on widening the gap between higher education and the labor market, the impact of the low level of funding for developing the quality of education on the rising unemployment rate, the consequences of poor university management for the labor market, the danger of commodifying university education, and universities’ concern with student numbers at the expense of the quality of education provided to them in light of the enormous scientific progress and the world’s entry into the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Text © Ma'an News Agency — archived here with attribution to the source. — Machine translation for archival reference. — Original source