A recent report stated 65 percent of the 60,000 students studying at technical colleges across the Kingdom are dropping out, those who do finish remain unemployed for years. The report's author, Saad Al-Rashud a training and rehabilitation researcher said close to 50 percent of technical college graduates from the 50 technical institutes across the Kingdom are unemployed, Al-Watan reported Monday. Those who are lucky enough to be employed were hired to do clerical and administrative work. Al-Rashud said within the same academic year 2003 there were 33,867 students whereas in 2004 there were 10,802 students. Salem Al-Qahtani, member of the Shoura Council social commitee said developed countries were able to develop their industries quickly with a skilled workforce. “This is why the government gives so much attention to the technical and vocational training of young Saudis.” Qahtani attributes one of the problems with the many colleges around the Kingdom is that several years ago the colleges were converted from normal academic institutes to technical training colleges. These colleges were not equipped infrastructurally to deal with the new demands placed on them he said. “The problem in the conversion is that it shows that there is no clearcut vision defining the tasks of these colleges. In fact this made the Shoura Council issue a decision for the revaluation for the General Organization of Technical Education and Vocational Training (GOTVET) so that the Council can be sure the organization is moving in the right direction. The GOTVET was created 15 years and was the organization responsible for the conversion of the colleges into technical training colleges. Ali Bin Nasser Al-Gofais, Governor of GOTEVT said King Abdullah ordered an allocation of SR10 billion from Kingdoms surplus for the development of another 49 technical colleges and 142 vocational training institutes in order to absorb 459,000 trainees. Shoura Council member Abdul Aziz Al-Harithy said an indepth study is needed to find out why such a large number of graduates are left unemployed after investing in their education. “These colleges should be upgraded to the level and standard of the Yanbu and Jubail Industrial Colleges which would make companies more eager to employ graduates because of the quality they can produce,” he said. Eid Al-Shemery, a member of the Shoura Council said the Kingdom needs its own base of skilled workers like the developed countries. “Our country needs a large base of skilled laborers in the first place to replace the foreign skilled workers. The industrial progress of any country depends on its won skilled workers force. Without them there can be no real progress,” Al-Shemery said. Al-Shemery said the technical development of the country is slow and cannot cope with the fast-paced development of the rest of the world. He said countries like Japan and Germany have a highly skilled workforce which helped transform their economies from industrial nations to technically specialized economies. The Shoura Council and the GOTVET have designed a plan to further develop the technical training colleges in order for them to become competitive with the rest of the world. The plan is set to cooperate with the private sector so the requirements can be met.
