Kito de Boer speaks on employment at Dubai Women's College

According to a report published by the World Bank, the pace of economic and social reforms that had started in the Gulf region in 2000 has not slowed down yet.

Social and economic reforms in the M.E. continue to address the fundamental issues of having a local population that is gainfully employed and does not depend on government jobs.

Such reforms are the main force behind recent changes in the educational system that target supplying the local market with graduates who are properly equipped to fill positions in demand.

'DWC aims at 100% employment of its graduates and always monitors the local market to make sure the programs offered match the market demands,' said Dr Howard Reed, Senior Director at the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) and DWC Director.

According to de Boer, the employment of women is the single most important change that took place in the Middle East since 2000. The biggest challenge facing the Middle East region, however, is that it has to create 100 million jobs in the next fifteen years; the region has to double its employment rates.

'This qualitative and quantitative challenge does not exist anywhere else in the world. In the United States it takes 50 years to double the number of employment while in the United Kingdom it takes 100 years,' noted de Boer.

In the past 5 years, statistics indicate that women employment rates have been substantially increasing.

de Boer explained that this is mainly due to the fact that women's academic performance is much higher than men's and therefore they have been gaining more employment opportunities. Women perform better academically due to the role of female teachers who reinforce the education of bright hungry young women in the region.

Although leaders of the region are heavily focused on creating opportunities for the youth, unemployment rates remain frightening. According to a Zoghby report, unemployment below 30 years old is typically 30% in the Gulf region. Region's leaders believe this is the biggest threat to its stability. The key solution, however, lies in properly designed educational systems that focus on creating people who are functionally employable.

'When we talk about reform in Saudi Arabia, we refer to the HCT as an example of indigenous success…of its great contributions in terms of making generations of young locals more employable,' noted de Boer.

In the case of the UAE, the government is interested in placing its local population in work environments that are compatible with the best performing ones in the world. According to McKinsey's data, the biggest challenge facing people in the region is that private companies do not want to employ locals because they believe the educational system have failed them and that locals are not fit for purpose. With less than 1%, the UAE has the lowest percentage of locals working in the private sector compared to other countries in the region.