Education and career guidance in Algeria : recurrent dysfunctions

Abstract

This chapter highlights the ways in which career guidance, understood as a process that provides information, advice and guidance to students and adults with a view to better balance the supply and demand of skills, cannot flourish in Algeria given the phenomenon of academic drift. Despite clear evidence that a vocational education and training pathways is more likely to lead to employment, Algerian students continue flocking to universities, which have become mass institutions feeding widespread unemployment nation-wide. In the meantime, student orientation services remain quite powerless, given that it is mainly the logic of the grade, and the French tradition of conseil de classe, that determines the educational pathways to be followed by students, where choices are made by default, irrespective of ability, inclination, and desire. The spectre of an army of unemployed youth, frustrated and disoriented, poses severe problems that career guidance cannot be expected to resolve on its own. While some initiatives have been launched to support career planning and development for both students and adults, the jury is still out as to their impact and longevity.