How to prepare for future jobs

Using data to predict which industries will need graduates is good – with one caveat

Emirati graduates at a job fair in Sharjah job (Victor Besa)

The numbers are striking. According to Dr Ahmad Belhoul, the Minister for Higher Education, 40 per cent of students have skills that are not needed in the current job market. That means, at a minimum, that their talents are being underutilised and they are not using the value of their education. At worse it means they are unable to find work.

The solution that Dr Belhoul outlined is to create a new department that will use data analysis to direct graduates towards the types of jobs that are needed. A good move, but one that comes with a caveat.

The positive aspect is that in a relatively small country such as the UAE, data analysis can help ensure there are not shortfalls in certain sectors. If there are, for example, too many dentists being trained and not enough intensive-care doctors, as another speaker pointed out at the event at which Dr Belhoul spoke, then an adjustment can be made. And as long as the data analysis is sufficiently sophisticated, such interventions can be made in plenty of time.

Those interventions, when they come, should be, as far as possible, in the form of incentives. Of course, students will want to work in fields where they are more likely to find jobs. But requiring that they must work in those fields is rather different.

The department within the Ministry of Higher Education must employ a light touch to incentivise students into, for example, engineering and away from business studies. That could be in the form of scholarships, for example, or help with professional fees or fast-tracking within companies. It will take innovative policy, and coordination with companies, for the incentive scheme to work best.

The caveat is that a significant proportion of students must still be free to choose their fields of study. That is because Government cannot hope to control every outcome. Students will study obscure topics that one day sprout into entire industries. After all, most of the jobs of the future haven’t been invented yet. It will be hard for any ministry to incentivise students in such jobs.