JEDDAH, 12 April 2007 — Fifteen new colleges, including two medical colleges in Riyadh and Al-Kharj and an institute of tourism and a nanotechnology center in Jeddah, will be established soon.
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has approved the proposals made by the Higher Education Council in this respect, according to Higher Education Minister Dr. Khaled Al-Anqari.
Anqari said the king has also approved a proposal to bring the colleges of teachers and girls under the purview of universities at academic, administrative and financial levels. These colleges were till now under the Higher Education Ministry.
Approval has also been given for a center of contemporary Islamic studies and cultural dialogue at Imam Muhammad ibn Islamic University and four colleges at King Saud University. Three new colleges for science; computer science and business administration will be established in the Women’s University in Riyadh.
Meanwhile, the General Organization for Technical Education and Vocational Training (GOTEVOT) is in the process of giving over 50 foreign companies licenses to train young Saudis to meet the Kingdom’s job market requirements.
“The organization is now studying the applications from over 50 major foreign companies that specialize in technical education and vocational training,” said Dr. Mubarak Al-Tami, director of the training department at GOTEVOT.
He said the new companies would provide training to young Saudi men and women in new areas such as petroleum, gas, oil exploration, computer programming, management, health services and engineering.
“This will certainly lead to the Kingdom achieving self-sufficiency in technically skilled labor in most categories required by the market,” the GOTEVOT official said.
According to a recent study, only 35,000 of 155,000 Saudi jobseekers are trained. A lack of training institutes is one of the main problems facing the job market and Saudis getting jobs in the private sector.
