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Encouraging Entrepreneurship: Path to Sustaining Future Economies GCC governments and markets push for privatisations, growth of startups and fostering entrepreneurship
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join the labour market and contribute to the Kingdom’s national development. The number of Saudis looking for jobs during the third quarter of 2019 was 1,025,328, according to the Ministry of Civil Service and the Human Resources Development Fund.
Under the reform plan, by 2030 women’s participation in the workforce is anticipated to increase from 22 per cent to 30 per cent, and the overall unemployment rate is expected to fall from 12.7 per cent to 7 per cent.
The Kingdom also launched “remote-work” programme that includes an electronic portal for self-employment that will help to achieve the Vision 2030 plan to find suitable job opportunities for Saudi citizens.
The platform brings together job seekers and business owners to offer suitable and stimulating job opportunities that guarantee stability and independence. The platform is a new approach in Saudi Arabia to bring unemployment down to 7 per cent by 2030, in line with the objectives of Vision 2030.
A key way to solve the GCC education’s challenge is to offer courses which solve the job market’s skilled labour crisis. Most of the graduates passing out of colleges do not possess the skill set required by corporates or industry. Universities are slowly adapting to this requirement.
“Innovation in the education sector cannot be compared to other industries such as Tech because we are a slower moving giant. Having said that, the industry has seen a myriad of new products, ideas and pedagogies come into practice in the last decade or so,” says Dr. James Trotter, Dean and Academic President of Murdoch University, Dubai.
The varsity offers courses such as Bachelor of Science in Cyber Security & Forensics and Criminology Major which stems from future jobs and skills requirements. Crossfunctional education with double majors is also another imperative designed for a young population that will most likely work across many functions, roles and industries in their lives.
“The employment of the future will increasingly require adaptability, teamwork skills, and a commitment to continued learning,” he adds.
“Edtech is another area of transformation where agile and blended models of learning are making their way into ‘mainstream’ education to provide wider options and opportunities to students across the world,” said Dr Trotter.
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ENCOURAGING ENTREPRENEURSHIP: PATH TO SUSTAINING FUTURE ECONOMIES Young entrepreneurs could be the links between a thriving economy, sustainable future and overall human development. Middle East currently has 25 unicorns - a tech startup that reaches a $1 billion market value. As the GCC governments and markets push for privatisations, growth of startups and fostering entrepreneurship may take a heady role in economic development and job creation.
As the GCC countries try to build robust entrepreneurship ecosystems to diversify their economies, nurturing venturefriendly markets becomes crucial. Without universities, corporations, risk capitals and entrepreneurs to act as stakeholders, big ambitions will stay just that. This is where education institutions come into the play.
Recently, several Dubai-based varsities came together to the launch University Entrepreneurship Programme. The programme ‘Alchemy’ – a partnership between Dubai Future Foundation and a number of universities and organisations in the emirate – aimed to accelerate the implementation of the Dubai University Free Zones Strategy in collaboration with various government entities, universities and research bodies. Universities adopting the programme include Zayed University, Higher Colleges of Technology, University of Dubai, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, American University in Dubai and the College of Fashion and Design in Dubai. The programme is structured to support college students aiming to start their entrepreneurial venture before graduating by providing them with skills and services to enable them to transform their ideas into well established businesses. Other initiatives in the UAE include Ghadan 21 or ‘Tomorrow 21’ in Abu Dhabi, a Dh50 billion investment, focusing on stimulating the local entrepreneurial ecosystem and start-ups by providing access to government-backed loans to help trigger more innovation.
Saudi too has been building itself as an entrepreneurial hub. The Badir Program for Technology Incubators, a center for startup support, has helped several companies grow and delivered more than SAR2 billion impact on the Saudi economy. In line with Saudi Vision 2030, which mandates invigorating a robust entrepreneurship ecosystem, stakeholder groups, including universities and corporations, are coming forward.
Oman and Bahrain are the other emerging entrepreneur hubs in the GCC. For the first time, the young demographic talent of these countries are moving away from state jobs to the entrepreneurship sphere.
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ARE VARSITIES CREATING JOB-READY CANDIDATES? Universities have long been trying to bridge the gap between education and skills required for job. Employers and business leaders often lament about what students learn during higher education and what they are actually expected to know.
According to a Harvard Business Review study, “Universities could substantially increase the value of the college degree if they spent more time teaching their students critical soft skills. Recruiters and employers are unlikely to be impressed by candidates unless they can demonstrate a certain degree of people-skills. This is perhaps one of the biggest differences between what universities and employers look for in applicants. “While employers want candidates with higher levels of EQ, resilience, empathy, and integrity, those are rarely attributes that universities nurture or select for in admissions. As the impact of AI and disruptive technology grows, candidates who can perform tasks that machines cannot are becoming more valuable — and that underscores the growing importance of soft skills, which are hard for machines to emulate.”
Top employers like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, have often highlighted the importance of learnability - being curious and having a hungry mind - as a key indicator of career potential, the study adds.
To bridge this gap, Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Dubai has established Advisory Boards comprising of top leadership from the industry providing with direction on the evolution of the programs, the new emerging technologies in the industry, the desired skills and competencies needed for employment. “The Advisory Board members support with curriculum development, delivering courses,
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training students, allowing students to work on advanced projects and also support students in creating start-ups. This is not only an assurance for raising the quality assurance bar but also makes programmes relevant and provide students with required standards to enhance their learning and success,” says Dr Khalid Khawaja, VP Academic Affairs at RIT Dubai.
The university has mandated a co-op requirement for students, which enforces their development and provides practical experience in the industry. It also provides students opportunity to study at it other global campuses for international exposure. “For example, cybersecurity is one of the growing fields in industry and RIT offers as an undergraduate programme. Also, RIT Dubai offers concentrations, for instance, renewable energy focus within Mechanical Engineering which mirrors where the world and industries are heading to,” says Ms Orsi Orban, Manager Outreach and Cooperative Education at RIT Dubai. “RIT Dubai offers a variety of Career Services programs and co-curricular activities to facilitate the students career readiness: career preparation course is a graduation requirement, Career Tuesdays event series and two career fairs every year. These all provide relevant networking opportunities and exposure to learn from industry experts on how to succeed as a young professional,” she adds.
Murdoch University Dubai too has mandatory Career Learning units in all undergraduate programs from the first trimester. A similar Advisory Panel has been set up in collaboration between the university and industry experts to foster students’ skill development, the acquisition, adoption and generation of knowledge, and the promotion of entrepreneurship.
Murdoch also has an online career portal with regular internship and job listings from over 200 organisations in the UAE.
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RISE OF PRIVATE SECTOR IN EDUCATION Despite the economic slowdown in the region, the GCC education market is poised for growth in pre-primary, primary, secondary, tertiary, higher education, and vocational segments.
According to Alpen Capital report, the preprimary and tertiary segments ar expected to grow at a faster rate than the other segments between 2017 and 2022. The pre-primary segment is expected to grow at a Compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.7 per cent, whereas the tertiary segment is witness growth at a CAGR of 3.6 per cent. Primary and secondary sectors will witness a moderate growth rate of 1.8 per cent and 2.0 per cent CAGR, respectively.
Saudi Arabia, with 6.14 million students out of total 9.1 million students in the GCC, is by far the largest K-12 market with almost 68 per cent share of total GCC market.
“Saudi Arabia is expected to remain the largest education market in the GCC in 2022. In terms of annual growth, the number of students in Oman is projected to grow at a faster rate than the other member nations. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is also anticipated to account for the highest number of schools in GCC by 2022,” adds the report. Demand for private sector education in Saudi Arabia is expected to double by 2030, according to Colliers International.
In 2019, the market share of the private sector in Saudi was just 18.2 per cent, lower than 40.9 per cent in Kuwait, 73.4 per cent in the UAE and 90.5 per cent in Dubai. “The share of international schools is even lower, with 378,000 students (out of 6.1m students), in international schools. With the exception GEMS Education and SABIS no regional or international operators are currently operating in KSA,” says Mansoor Ahmed, director, Colliers MENA.
In Saudi’s K12 Education Sector, private operators focus on both expat and local children to attract sustainable demand.
The report further adds that 22 per cent of Omani student population attend private schools, while 41 per cent in Kuwait. In UAE, both Dubai and Abu Dhabi student boast private school penetration levels of 90 per cent and 64 per cent respectively. Saudi has the lowest student penetration in private schools at around 18 per cent. The school education market shows lot of room for private sector in all the GCC states. The UAE’s overall education sector is projected to be one of the fastest growing in the region. Nearly 1.03 million students enrolled in both public and private schools as of the academic year 2016-17 and the total number of students in schools and universities in the UAE is projected to grow by 4.1 per cent annually until 2020.
