What happens when graduates cannot find suitable jobs? They are basically forced to take anything offered to them even if it is sometimes with lower salaries than they expect or would accept in normal circumstances.
In the educational establishment, where there is a pressing need to hire more employees, they are hired — but at lower job levels than the employees are entitled to. There seems to be saturation at the college graduate level so two other job levels are on offer: the level of illiteracy eliminators and the level of laborers.
Neither requires higher degrees while both offer low salaries without annual leave and only limited sick leave. A young woman who works full time in the Presidency of Girl’s Education said that she and hundreds of other college graduates are employed full-time but their salaries are at the lowest rung of the ladder.
They have to accept the situation since they need the income, but frustration inevitably creeps in and makes them feel that they are being taken advantage of.
Now is it really possible that the only jobs available are at the two levels I mentioned above — illiteracy eliminators and laborers? University graduates who apply for jobs now, if they are lucky, get appointed at one of these two levels.
The strange thing is that those women remain in the jobs only because they have been promised a promotion as soon as new jobs for college graduates are available. As one of the women said, however,
“When jobs for college graduates do become available, the powers that be won’t remember us; they will get new people to fill the jobs and our situation will never change.”
There is obviously a problem, and maybe a little planning would help us. If jobs are not available, then we should not hire people at lower salaries than they deserve or hire them and expect more work from them than their job description implies.
They should certainly not be asked to do more work for less pay. This is as unjust as it is possible to be; it also creates a sense of frustration among the workers.
And the idea of giving new jobs to new people while ignoring those who have been waiting for years to improve their situation is ridiculous.
In our universities, where no new jobs have been available for years, many professors complain that they do not have junior staff in line to take over when they retire.
A professor told me that in his department there are no new teachers and the existing staff is bound to retire in a few years time and there are no new teachers to fill the places.
“The universities might offer contracts and get teachers from abroad when they have to face the situation when all the old, experienced teachers retire. This will only make the situation worse.” One of the problems people have complained about is that some college graduates are not responsible enough and cannot handle jobs.
On the other hand, there are those who want to work and others who already work hard — but they are not given the chance.
So where do we go from here? What will happen to all the graduates that our universities produce if we cannot give them suitable jobs? This question has to be answered or else we’ll have to give Saudization of jobs a goodbye kiss.
