The Effect Of Quality Of Higher Education System On The Compatibility Between The Skills Of Graduates And The Requirements Of The Labour Market In Egypt

Abstract

Research to date has addressed that there is incompatibility (gap) between the skills of university graduates and the labour market requirements in Egypt. The factors that affect this gap, as well as HOW to bridge the gap, have not been surveyed in previous studies in Egypt. The purpose of this research is to identify the key factors in the Egyptian higher education (HE) system which affect the quality of the public universities, and to explore the changes that must be made by the Egyptian HE Management (Ministry of HE) within the boundaries factors to achieve significant and real improvements in the quality of the Egyptian HE system; thus the skills gap will then be bridged and the mismatch between skills of the university graduates and the skills needed by market will be decreased. This study develops a new model (system dynamics model) of the factors that leads to the gap between the skills of the Egyptian university graduates and the requirements of the labour market. Particular focus is on identification of the key structural changes that need to be made to reduce this gap and their effects, using public Egyptian universities as a case study. The initial influence diagram is built based on relationships identified by semi-structured interviews with the administrative and academic staff members from various public universities in Egypt; all these staff members have experience in the quality of the HE system. This initial structure has been validated by using two groups of standard system dynamics tests, namely the structural validation and behavioural validation tests and empirical tests using a group of administrative and academic staff members with experience that exceeds 15 years in the HE system. The model contains more than90 variables that are associated with the quality of Egyptian HE system. PowerSim Studio 10 Academic® is used as system dynamics software to build a stocks-and-flows diagram from the influence diagram. Many scenarios have been made to test the effects of different variables in order to find the dominant variables. The model is simulated over a five-year period from the academic year 2012-2013 till the academic year 2016-2017.As shown in this study, there are seven key variables that influence the quality of the Egyptian HE system and thus affect the skills gap. Some of these factors have instant and rapid effects, while others take time for their effects to appear on the quality of services provided by Egyptian universities. The increase of these variables leads to increase the quality of services provided by the Egyptian universities. Therefore, this increase will lead to an uptake of the skills of graduates and then a decrease of the skills gap. This achieves the compatibility between the skills of university graduates and the requirements of the labour market in Egypt.