Facing Human Capital Challenges of the 21st Century
Education and Labor Market Initiatives in Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates

A key challenge faced by countries in the Arab world today is promoting human capital development of the region’s population.

The 2003 Arab Human Development Report (United Nations Development Programme, 2003), with its call to build a “knowledge society” in response to economic globalization and technological change, spotlighted the deficits in education systems and workforce skills throughout much of the Arab region. There is a need for the economies in the region to be diversified—especially away from sectors built on natural resources such as oil and gas—the private sector to be expanded, and entrepreneurship to be fostered.

Progress in raising literacy and enrollment rates—especially at the primary level—has been considerable in recent decades in the Arab world, but education outcomes continue to lag those of other regions of the world. Even in cases in which education outcomes have been on a par with those of other developed countries, the education systems themselves do not consistently produce graduates who possess the skills needed for a 21st century global economy.

One consequence is that the demand for a qualified workforce is outpacing the supply of skilled workers—both in sectors that are already important in the economies of Arab countries and in areas of new opportunity. For some countries in the region, the citizen population is too small to support the economy, so skilled labor must be imported; in other countries, high population growth leads to a large youth population that must be educated and transitioned to productive work.

This monograph outlines the measures taken by Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to address the human resource and labor market issues that these countries face as they enter the 21st century global economy. These focal countries provide examples of the diversity and similarity of challenges faced by the Arab region and responses to those challenges. ...

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Gabriella Gonzalez | Lynn A. Karoly | Louay Constant
Hanine Salem | Charles A. Goldman

Published 2008 by the RAND Corporation
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Preface
Many nations are making efforts to address human resource development challenges and any existing mismatch between the skills and technical knowledge of their secondary and post-secondary education graduates and the needs of the labor market.

RAND recently examined such efforts in four Middle Eastern countries: Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The study focused on reforms enacted or under way that were designed to improve the nation’s human capital, or skills and technical knowledge, of its population, or to facilitate the employment of human capital in diverse sectors of the economy.

The case study approach juxtaposed three Arab Gulf countries (Oman, Qatar, and the UAE) and one non-Gulf country (Lebanon) to showcase similarities and differences in the reform strategies these countries were employing as of 2006. The nations were compared in terms of challenges they faced, reforms enacted, and efforts to assess reform impacts. ...

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