Preparations are under way for opening 50 technical colleges and some 100 polytechnics all over the Kingdom. The combined cost will be approximately SR6 billion. Before opening all these institutions we should first conduct a thorough review of the standard of technical education in the country in order to determine if the existing ones have indeed fulfilled the role expected of them and whether our educational system produces graduates who can easily find their way into the job market.
In the absence of qualified bodies to serve as a reference in determining the quality and effectiveness of the current training techniques, we urgently need to have specialized institutions that study, analyze and evaluate the standard of these technical colleges and institutes. They should also determine whether the job market is satisfied with the performance of these colleges and their ability to meet the requirements of the market. This is of utmost importance and should be done before we embark on such a massive project.
Despite the absence of credible studies and surveys to tell us whether students attending our technical colleges and institutes are qualified to meet the job market needs, many will say that they have failed. The view held by employers about the ability of technical college graduates to meet the challenge and satisfy the needs of the private sector is that they are below the standard. Students continue to major in such theoretical studies as accounting and marketing in colleges that are called technical.
I don’t want to go into details regarding the standard of qualifications for instructors and teachers, the technical applications used or the nature of lessons given. The standard of the graduates and their ability or inability to enter the job market explains everything.
Six billion riyals is a great deal of money. The amount is to be spent on the infrastructure of this giant national project — buildings, equipment and other facilities with even the superstructure receiving its share as well. Unless we have highly qualified technical bodies capable of transferring the technology and guaranteeing the quality of education, these and other technical colleges will only partly solve the problem. They might enable a few graduates to find jobs with private businesses but what about the others? Partial solutions will never help us reduce unemployment which should be the ultimate objective of any project like this.
Let us start by giving the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training wider powers that removes it from the control of the civil service. Let us turn it into a body which is capable of dealing effectively with the challenges of today and the future and never refuses to learn from other’s experience.
