Development of career-related services in Egypt at Cairo University and Suez Canal University

This on�site consultation took place during late July 1992. Graduates of Egyptian universities are confronted with an economy offering large-scale unemployment, a problem which is compounded by a lack of information about how to find and compete for those jobs which are available. While individual faculty try to help students informally, institutionally operated services to assist graduating seniors with their search do not currently exist. Cairo and Suez Canal Universities are interested in developing programs that would provide job vacancy information to graduating seniors. Egyptian enterprise is currently undergoing significant change. Businesses and services formerly under the auspices of governmental agencies are in the process of converting to private control. This privatization will no doubt cause repercussions both in terms of the way business is conducted and in a possible rethinking of business and governmental employment needs. Privatization may very well promote an interest in, and requirement for, different employee skills and specialties. Universities will obviously want to anticipate these trends and progressively address these new demands. Career centers can assist by serving as a liaison between the university community and the new private sector. At this point in time universities have little need to provide career counseling. Students are admitted to academic programs based upon their high school preparation and examination scores. It would appear that if individuals need assistance with setting satisfying career goals, this sort of counseling should take place in the junior high or early high school years. There is a need, however, for universities to provide assistance related to career search. Graduating students have no sources of information about how to find jobs, write resumes, prepare for interviews, identify and contact employers; etc. This lack of information very often leaves graduates to fend for themselves, sometimes simply waiting for the government to advertise job openings for which they can apply, whether or not those jobs are in their field of study. Therefore, a major role of the Career Center would be to teach job search skills and prepare students for the job market. A fundamental problem, which apparently has stood in the way of past employer-university relationships, has been a simple lack of contact between the two groups. The corporate sector has had no established protocol for notifying educational institutions of job openings, and universities have not seen a need for this kind of service in the past. Thus, a third role of the Career Center is to be an easily identifiable location for employer contact and to pave the way for interaction between employers and university students. The two universities have somewhat different needs because of location, number of students, availability of resources, etc. For example, Cairo University is located in downtown Cairo and has the advantage of close proximity to a large number of employers. Suez Canal University is composed of three widely separated campuses, all fairly rural, but has an electronic mail and bulletin board system which, when fully implemented, will offer tremendous communication advantages. Ultimately, the basic requirements associated with setting up both Career Centers are similar, with only a few situational variations. Officials at each University were faced with similar dilemmas, which were addressed in the reports given to them. Briefly, these areas consisted of how to encourage university support for the establishment of the Career Center; determining specific space, staffing and financial needs; identifying the goals and components of a center and its activities; and addressing the specific steps to getting the center"s programs started. This monograph includes copies of the reports submitted to the respective campuses in July 1992, after consulting with key individuals from each institution. The reports are virtually identical, with distinctions made only where the uniqueness of the individual campus warranted. (Author abstract)