University education promises the opportunity to increase young people’s knowledge, but in today’s frail labor market it doesn’t guarantee a job or a career of one’s choice after graduation. It is seen that most graduates who manage to find a good job after graduation don’t work in fields they have studied.
According to Azad University News Agency (ANA), 75% of university graduates have never worked in areas corresponding with their degrees. Currently, 35% of medical university graduates are working in non-medical fields.
Balancing academic courses and demands of the tight job market can help resolve this major problem and the authorities at the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology are apparently moving in this direction, the Persian language newspaper ‘Iran’ reported.
With the aim to bridge the gap between academic education and labor market demands, the ministry has a plan by which all university courses and job opportunities will be scrutinized and the academic majors which are not in high demand will be removed from the university curriculum. The measure will be reviewed separately for each province.
Although this will not immediately solve the youth unemployment problem (due to a variety of economic ills), at least it can guarantee that more graduates will have jobs related to their majors and employers can benefit from the skills of the graduates.
“We have developed a list of university majors that are getting saturated in the job market. The majors will be removed from the education system after final appraisal of the lists,” said Shariati Niasari, a deputy for education affairs at the ministry.
Once approved, low-ranked universities won’t be allowed to offer fields of study that are over-saturated and have little or no demand in the job market. Only top universities will continue to offer the programs.
Unemployment Rate
The Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare has brought out a list of post-graduate university majors with the highest and lowest unemployment rates.
According to the list, post-graduate unemployment rate is the highest among environment graduates (49.1%) and lowest among graduates of majors related to ‘health and hygiene’ (7.9%). Other fields on the list are: teaching (8%), journalism (8.8%), business management (19.5%), social sciences (19.7%), law (21.8%), biology (22%), forestry and fisheries (22%), architecture (25.9%), computer (39.9%).
For some university majors like astronomy there are few positions and strong competition.
Figures released by the ministry also show that from among the six million male graduates from universities, three million are employed and only 487,000 are seeking jobs. Also from among the 5.3 million female graduates, 1.2 million are on pay rolls and 546,000 are hunting for work.
Latest data from the Statistical Center of Iran (SCI) reveals that the unemployment rate was 12.7% in summer this year (June-September), a 1.8% increase compared with the same period last year. The rate is 14.4% for urban areas and 7.9% in the rural regions.
Seven provinces, namely Markazi, West Azarbaijan, Hamedan, Semnan, Zanjan, North Khorasan and Gilan, registered single-digit unemployment rates during the period.
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