Al-Jazirah

It has been argued that some of our university graduates cannot find jobs and hence they start laying the blame on others.

Many of them will have to blame themselves for choosing a useless major, which has no future. A second group will blame the university for not providing any guidance to the students before they start their five-year journey in the institution, with the hope of leaving it the next year ready to join the job market.

A third group will blame their families and friends for making them enroll in certain majors that have no functional advantage or career future.

There are those who stand with the unemployed graduates and blame the related government departments for not setting a clear direction the university students need to take before it is too late.

Then comes the voice of the academic who says the universities are not factories that produce workers for the job market, but their goal is to enrich lives.

As much as we hear the graduates blaming their institutions, the universities, on the other hand, vehemently justify their position.

Our universities defend themselves by stating that their responsibilities are limited to teaching the course material of each major within set academic criteria, like any university in the world. They select applicants in each major using their own mechanism that will help the students achieve their goals.

Graduates on the other hand defend their position quoting a verse of the Holy Qur’an, which says, “If I had knowledge of the unseen, I should have multiplied all good, and no evil should have touched me.”

But their ignorance of the rule of supply and demand in the job market resulted in them choosing the unwanted path. Then they ask whether it is fair to deprive them of a job because of their lack of skills and knowledge.

As for their defense for misleading the students to unwanted specialties, their relatives, friends and families say, “We only knew what we had heard. We wanted nothing but the best for the students. We did our best to provide a good piece of advice but as human beings we are prone to making mistakes.”

This is only part of the heated discussion about the plight of our university graduates who fail to find suitable jobs. Many people prefer government jobs. But they go to the private sector as a second and a temporary option. When everything else fails, they start complaining and blaming their parents, friends and universities, but not themselves.

To be frank, the graduates are right to some extent in their allegations but they must take part of the blame.

The graduates could have exercised their freedom to ask the experts on the specialty they wanted to join. They, however, did not do so and chose majors that they had the best impression about.

Their families could have guided the students by reminding them of their freedom to choose and ask questions, and not settle on what they wanted them to learn.

The university should have provided counsel to the students and not force them to join this or that major. If the students chose one specialty or other, then it is their own choice and they are responsible for it.

One last and important question: Is the purpose of university education to find a job or enrich life?