The recent announcement of the record budget allocated for 2006 has created a vivid controversial media dialogue. Many welcomed it by saying that the focus on capital, education and welfare projects are timely, in lieu of the rapidly growing young population; others challenged the fact that regardless of how much infrastructure is created to accommodate the nation, no true development will occur without a proficient and highly skilled manpower. Even though some experts have described the fiscal budget of 2006 as “a budget with a vision”, a vision can only turn into reality if we take into account hard earned lessons from the past.
Saudi Arabia has always been aware of the important role the national labor force plays as the engine of social and economic growth and development. For those in doubt, a proof of this commitment is strategically documented into the five-year development plans which are the blueprint for further development in the Kingdome. However, despite this blueprint, and in spite of all the necessary financial resources that were put into place to educate and train our people, we have somehow managed to produce graduates whose qualifications cannot accommodate the current working needs of the private sector. The upcoming challenge that faces us today as a nation does not lie in the amount and number of educational institutions we plan to build, but in the quality of education and knowledge as well as on the relevance of the skills that is imparted on those who will benefit from these institutions.
The burning issue for us to address as a nation is how can we guarantee that the large sum of the national budget for 2006 (nearly one third on education and training alone) will not keep on producing the same quality of unemployable graduates we have been producing in the past? Especially since we all know that second chances rarely come around a third time.
The record surplus that the Kingdom is witnessing due to the high price of oil is reminiscent of a similar period in time not so long ago. Some thirty or forty years back, that the Kingdom witnessed a similar economic boom. During the first oil boom, the primary development objective for the Kingdom was to pave the way for modernization. Budget allocations at the time were put in place to create sustainable infrastructure. Finances were allocated to the building of roads, hospitals, schools, universities and telecommunication systems as well as on the outsourcing of foreign specialists and experts to champion the process of nation building. At the time, the Kingdom still being in its infancy stage, never lost sight of developing its own labor force by providing international scholarships, as well as free education to all its citizens so that eventually, the outsourced professionals would be succeeded by qualified Saudi nationals.
Today, some thirty to forty years later, despite the good intentions behind all the development plans, and the continuous allocations of funds for education and training, the nation finds itself having to deal with a high rate of unemployment and a high number of expatriate workers. It is this very conflicting phenomenon that has prompted a national outcry and debate among the general population, to find ways in which the educational system can be updated and reformed to produce the knowledge worker, the thinker, the researcher, the innovator and the entrepreneur.
As a solution the fiscal budget of 2006 has allocated 26.5 percent of its budget on education, and 7.42 percent on opening new schools. However budget allocation in itself is not a solution to unemployment. Education and training are the single most important tools nations have to prepare their national workforce for a productive professional life in the context of a globalized and competitive environment. Education is only as good as its relevance is to current market needs and demands. Innovations in technology, the opening of new markets and industries, the rise and fall of economies, the liberalization of trade as well as global competition are indicators that our planners and educators must be aware of if they want to design as state of the art educational framework justified by market demand and relevance.
We are entering a new phase in the history of our human civilization that has no precedent. We can only approach this phase as we approach any business prospect, by learning as we go along. Simply put, we identify a niche (the niche here being the need for a skilled and knowledgeable labor force). We then develop a plan of action based on market needs assessment and analysis (the plan being the design of an educational system that guarantees a product that has a zero-sum margin for error or defect). We never forget to keep our eye on the competition so that we can be one step ahead by planning for contingencies as they arise (the contingencies being the revision and the modification of the educational system) so that we can come up with generation two... three... and four...of same product; making sure that each generation brings with it its new competitive or comparative advantages!
Personally, I believe that the process of reviewing and reforming any educational system needs to be done — or at least looked into — at least twice during the schooling years (every 6 years so as to keep abreast of the fast pace within which the generation gap is narrowing; and once every 8 years during the undergraduate years. This will allow for a smooth integration of new areas of study if, and when, the need arises. This process will also bring about a wider perspective to the notion of education thereby setting it free from the confinements of the ever-so-restraining box that we have caged it in.
(Fatin Yousef Bundagji is director of Women Empowerment and Research at the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry.)