TIRANA, May 10 – Only about a tenth of Albanian university students will eventually find a well-matched job, unveiling the mismatch between the higher education system and labor market needs, according to a European Commission report examining higher education and labor market needs in the Western Balkans.
“The Albanian higher education (HE) system produces too many graduates relative to the needs of the labor market. Of every hundred students that enter the higher education system, only thirteen will eventually find a well-matched job indicating that the internal efficiency of the combined HE and labor market systems is just 11 percent,” says the report prepared for the European Commission.
The study shows that although the number of university students has tripled over the past decade, the quality of higher education remains weak since the level of public funding, one of the region’s lowest, has not increased in line with student numbers.
Every year an estimated of around 55,000 students enroll at all levels of studies at 37 Albanian higher education institutions, of whom only about 30,000 complete their studies each year, giving a completion ratio of about 53 percent.
“Corruption over admissions and examinations adversely affects enrolment and completion rates, and the low completion rates represent a waste of resources devoted to education,” noted the study.
Research also unveiled that poor teaching methods relying on rote learning and outdated curricula and lack of practice-oriented education lead to graduates not attaining the skills that employers need.
However, poor demand for new specialized workers seems a key reason in Albania where the garment and footwear and call centers are the main private sector employers, relying on on-the-job training and cheap labor costs.
According to one interviewee, “the Albanian labor market is dominated by small enterprises, which operate based on family connections and do not need very specialized qualifications.”
The report recommends action is needed both by higher education institutions as well as employers, the government and public employment services to produce a more effective outcome for graduate job seekers in order to only focus on improving the supply of skills through education and training systems, but also on simulating demand for high level skills in the market and their utilization in the workplace.
Due to its large outward migration, Albania is an exception among Western Balkans countries with little difference in total and graduate unemployment rates. The jobless rate among Albania’s university graduates is estimated at 17.2 percent, in line with the national unemployment rate. The jobless rate among newly graduates is at 27.7 percent, the region’s lowest, but yet reflecting the difficulty that new graduates face in entering the labor market.
Albania currently has 39 higher education institutions, of which 23 are privately-run.
The Balkan country had gone from having no private universities a decade ago to more than 40 private universities and professional college until 2014 when several private higher education institutions dubbed as diploma mills were closed down due to not meeting the minimal quality standards.
With a youth unemployment rate of about 30 percent, the booming call center business and the traditional garment and footwear manufacturing have emerging as two of the key employers for Albanian young men and women aged from 15 to 29.
While the call center business dominated by Italian companies mainly attracts university students and newly graduates who are unable to find a job in the occupation they have graduated in, the faà§on industry, a traditional employer producing garment and footwear mainly for export, is attracting a considerable number of youngsters who have finished only the compulsory education or secondary education but failed to attend university.
Albania has some 100,000 jobless youngsters aged between 15 to 29, a considerable number of whom joined the 2015 and 2016 exodus, when about 90,000 Albanians left the country to seek asylum in EU member countries, mainly in Germany.
With university degrees not matching market needs, the Albanian government has been promoting vocational education training whose students stand better chances to find a job. However, only about 10 percent of students are estimated to register in secondary and higher education vocational training schools.
