President highlights skills gap despite rising higher education enrollment

Uzbekistan spends between 25 and 30 million soums per year to educate each university student and prepare them as specialists, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced today, August 8, during an expanded meeting on the employment of graduates.

The president noted that while higher education enrollment has grown 4.5 times in the past seven years — reaching 42 percent coverage — the system for training personnel still does not meet the needs of the labor market.

For example, a car plant producing 20,000 vehicles annually currently has 100 vacancies, a quarter of which are for robotics and painting engineers, as well as robot programming specialists. Due to the shortage, 80 foreign specialists have been hired. If the plant reaches full capacity in 4–5 years and produces 500,000 cars annually, it will require 4,000 highly qualified workers.

“These are calculations for just one project. With large-scale projects worth $83 billion set to launch in the next 3–4 years, the industry alone will need about 500,000 specialists,” Mirziyoyev said.

The meeting also revealed that in light industry alone, there is demand for 4,000 skilled personnel, yet universities graduate only 2,500 students in this field annually. Moreover, 42 percent of these graduates cannot find employment because they lack practical experience with modern equipment, forcing companies to recruit trained specialists from abroad.

Out of 231,000 university graduates this year, 125,000 found jobs — but 42,000 of them became self-employed. The president criticized current employment tracking, noting that more than half of students who study for four years end up in low-skilled positions.

It is reported that the state spends 25-30 million soums per year to train each student in a university and train them as specialists. However, more than half of young people who study at a university for four years and receive a diploma are employed in jobs that require low qualifications.

It is worth noting that in a June 30 meeting with young people, Mirziyoyev said the share of managers under the age of 40 in Uzbekistan had increased from 37 percent to 65 percent over the past seven years, reflecting a generational shift in leadership.