The Truth’s Perspective | Dr. Ibrahim Shaglawi The University.. A Crisis of Choice or a Crisis of the State?

Every year, with the announcement of the Sudanese Certificate results, Sudanese families enter their familiar cycle of tension and anxiety: Which major should the student choose, which university is more suitable, and which college can open a safer path for the future? The choice appears to be an individual decision, but in reality, it reflects a system whose boundaries have been shaped by the state, the economy, and society, leaving the student with limited space to shape his future.

The student does not choose his major in a vacuum. He weighs his interests and abilities, while the family looks at employment opportunities, income, and social status.

 Amid an uncertain future, aspirations turn into calculations of security and labor-market considerations. Majors that appear to offer more secure employment therefore come to the forefront, even if they are not the best fit for the student’s abilities or the country’s needs, while fields needed by the economy and development decline because they do not appear to offer a clear path to employment and a decent life.

Here the state’s crisis begins. Education is not merely university admission and certificates; it is a tool for planning the future and building the economy. When universities and academic disciplines expand without being linked to labor-market needs, the state moves from addressing skills shortages to producing an oversupply of certificates. Young people graduate in increasing numbers, while sectors of the economy continue to need skills that they cannot find.

The student can choose his major, but he cannot plan the country’s labor market. The family can offer advice, but it cannot know what Sudan will need five or ten years from now. The university can produce qualified graduates, but it cannot alone build an economy capable of absorbing them. The state, however, is the entity capable of collecting data and linking education with development, investment, and production.

Hence, the absence of a regularly updated national database on the labor market and skills gaps makes university choice closer to guesswork. The admission guide, important as it may be in organizing placement, is not enough to answer the question occupying the family’s mind: What will Sudan need when my son graduates?

This function goes beyond guiding students through application procedures. It requires a national guidance system and an updated database that monitors labor-market trends, sectors expected to grow, and the skills required, alongside reviewing admission policies and academic disciplines according to development needs, without restricting the student’s freedom of choice.

This becomes even more important with the artificial intelligence revolution, which is expected to reshape many jobs, impose new skills, and reduce demand for some occupations in the foreseeable future.

Sudan has designated 2026 as the Year of Technical and Technological Education, but the real challenge begins after the announcement: How can this interest be transformed into attractive education, good training, respectable income, and a clear career path? People do not follow slogans; they follow what they see succeeding before them.

 After the war, the need for this type of education becomes even greater, because reconstruction requires technicians and skilled professionals to operate electricity and water systems, factories, hospitals, communications, agriculture, and roads. Therefore, building human capital is not a secondary issue to reconstruction; it is one of the conditions for its success.

Our country today does not need only more graduates, but graduates who are more capable of transforming knowledge into production. The university is not an employment office, the certificate is not an employment contract, and the state is not required to employ every graduate. But it is responsible for building the bridge between education and the economy, and between skills and opportunity.

Here, the philosophy of admission should change from the question, “How many students can we accommodate?” to the question, “What kind of person does the country need?” Education that measures its success only by the number of seats and graduates may achieve quantitative expansion, but it does not necessarily guarantee human development. A university that becomes disconnected from the economy and society loses part of its function, just as an economy that fails to benefit from knowledge wastes it.

This does not mean that education should become merely a factory for meeting labor-market demands. The university is a space for knowledge, research, thinking, and creativity. What is required, however, is to remove the disconnect between these functions and the needs of society, so that knowledge becomes capable of creating value, and skills become capable of creating a promising opportunity for the future.

The family is called upon to abandon the logic of prestige, the student to understand his abilities and interests, the university to improve the quality of education, and society to redefine success. But the state is called upon to connect all these elements through a clear national vision.

In conclusion, according to #The_Truths_Perspective, the university crisis is not a crisis of a student making the wrong choice; it is a crisis of a state that has not yet succeeded in drawing a picture of the future. A state that does not determine the needs of its economy, and does not link education to the labor market and reconstruction, leaves its children facing individual choices governed by fears rather than vision. After the war, it is no longer acceptable for universities to produce more certificates while the economy searches for skills. The issue, therefore, is not: What will the student study? Rather, what kind of Sudan does the state want to build, and what kind of person does this state need to build it?

Wishing you continued health and well-being.

Tuesday, September 29, 2026.

Shglawi55@gmail.com