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The Middle East and North Africa region has the world's lowest returns to education. This paper examines what the value of a degree is using nationally representative labour market surveys from Egypt (2012), Jordan (2010) and Tunisia (2014). Specifically, the authors estimate Mincer models for levels and years of schooling. They find that returns are highest in Tunisia and lowest in Egypt, although all three countries fall short of the global average. Higher education is where returns are greatest. They also analyse the returns by sub-groups: sex; age group; and sector. The returns are higher for women than men in Egypt. The younger generation has lower returns than the older generation in Egypt. The private sector in Egypt and Tunisia has lower returns than the public sector. One reason for the low returns is that many individuals are overeducated relative to position requirements.

The Middle East and North Africa region struggled to meet the employment aspirations of its increasingly educated youth in the aftermath of structural reforms. This article examines the evolution of initial labor market outcomes across pre- and post-reform cohorts of school leavers by education and socioeconomic status (SES) in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia. Results show that formal jobs for educated new entrants are increasingly allocated according to SES, as measured by parents' education and father's occupation, in Egypt and Tunisia, but not in Jordan. In Egypt and Tunisia, the quality of initial jobs deteriorated for educated new entrants, particularly among those with lower SES. This rising tide of inequality of opportunity in employment may have contributed to the Arab Spring uprisings and remains an important source of frustration for youth and their families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of private tutoring globally has raised concerns over the hidden costs of "free" education systems and how these costs contribute to the persistence of inequality. We examine the drivers of tutoring at different levels of education in Egypt in an effort to understand why private tutoring has expanded despite policy efforts to prevent its spread. We use nationally representative survey data and qualitative data on youth experiences in public, private, and religious schools. Our findings indicate that the drivers of tutoring are multiple and vary by schooling level. Structured around high-stakes exams, the Egyptian education system has fostered the growth of a diverse tutoring market. In general secondary school, tutoring has become so widespread that teachers and students shirk in school to devote more attention to tutoring. Structural factors and the expectation that students will engage in tutoring have thus become self-reinforcing. In basic education, teacher pressure is a major motivation for public school students to take tutoring. Given the failure of Egypt's efforts to ban and create alternatives to tutoring, there is an urgent need to test mechanisms for ensuring accountability in schools.

In Egypt and Jordan, there is a substantial mismatch between the output of the higher education system and the needs of the labor market. Both demand and supply-side factors could be driving this mismatch. This paper tests a key supply-side issue, whether differences in the institutional structures and incentives in higher education affect the labor market outcomes of graduates. Specifically, we ask if the stronger alignment of incentives in private relative to public higher education institutions produces more employable human capital and better labor market outcomes. We examine the impact of the type of higher education institution a person attends on several labor market outcomes while controlling for his or her pre-enrollment characteristics. The results demonstrate that supply-side issues and institutional incentives have little impact on labor market outcomes while family background plays by far the largest role. Proposed reforms for higher education often suggest increasing the role of the private sector in provision of higher education. Our findings indicate that this approach is unlikely to improve labor market outcomes.

Globally, employment rates of women remain substantially below those of men. Since women disproportionately care for children, policies that offer care alternatives or lower the cost of care, should, theoretically, increase women's employment. This paper tests whether public pre-primary education can increase women's employment, using a natural experiment in Algeria. Education reforms in Algeria substantially expanded public pre-primary, targeting children aged five. The paper uses data from 2006 (early in the expansion), 2012, and 2018 (after pre-primary had substantially expanded). The analyses use a discontinuity in whether children are eligible for pre-primary, based on their birthdates, to identify the effect of pre-primary on women's employment. Increased pre-primary education did not increase and may have actually decreased women's employment. One potential explanation for these findings is the half-day schedule of pre-primary may be difficult to reconcile with employment. Negative effects are concentrated among women living in nuclear families, who lack alternative caregivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of reasons have been proposed for the poor quality of higher education in the Arab world, including the poor incentive structures of public higher education institutions. The expansion of private higher education has been hailed as an important part of enhancing incentives and thus improving education quality. However, it is not clear whether the practices of private higher education institutions differ from those of public institutions. This article explores whether private provision improves the quality of higher education, as measured by pedagogy, accountability, and student perceptions of quality. The analysis focuses on commerce and information technology programs in Egypt and Jordan. The results indicate that pedagogy, accountability, and student perceptions of quality do not vary systematically by type of higher education institution in these countries and that expanding the role of private institutions in higher education is therefore unlikely to automatically improve educational processes or quality.

Although it is well‐established in the literature that unemployment is a labour market insertion problem in the Middle East and North Africa, the dynamics driving unemployment remain poorly understood. Using data from the Labor Market Panel Surveys in Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia, we offer insights into youth unemployment by studying flows into and out of unemployment. Female youth and Tunisian youth of both genders are particularly likely to experience long periods of unemployment. Educated youth from higher socioeconomic status backgrounds are more likely to experience unemployment, but there is not a strong relationship between background and unemployment duration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]