High school students in Qatar will have the opportunity to experience real-world job tasks this fall as part of an innovative initiative examining how young people make career decisions.
As part of a broader effort to align education with market needs, economists at Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q), with the endorsement of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, will run workshops in high schools across the country to better understand how young people make career and study decisions.
Funded by a Qatar Research, Development and Innovation (QRDI) Council grant, this project will recruit more than 1,500 high schoolers to participate in interactive online workshops where they role-play performing real-world market tasks. The tasks are not invented for the exercise: they are drawn from a database of more than 17,000 real job postings. Each workshop corresponds to one broad college major category.
In collaboration with their schools, which provide workshop space, students in grades 9-10 will be surveyed and then asked to complete tasks across six career categories. For STEM careers, students will perform data analysis and scientific problem-solving; in health and medicine, tasks include patient communication and health assessments; and in education, tasks include lesson design and communication activities. Business and economics tasks include negotiation and financial analysis; arts and humanities tasks include cultural interpretation and creative production; and social sciences tasks include policy reasoning and behavioural analysis.
A post-workshop survey will gather students’ views on career and educational paths. At the end of the exercise, each participating student will receive a detailed report of their individual findings, and a small cash gift in appreciation for their time.
Participating schools will keep access to the six-workshop platform free of charge after the study ends, and each school will receive an anonymised cohort insight report on its students’ preferences, beliefs, and performance. Schools interested in taking part in the 2026–2027 rollout can contact the project team at [email protected]
What Do Jobs Really Look Like? is a research project led by GU-Q professor Dr Santiago García-Couto that gives secondary students a firsthand, interactive experience of the tasks involved in six broad fields of study and measures how that experience shapes their educational choices, beliefs, and preferences. The QRDI Council funds it through the Life-Long Education Call, jointly with Education Above All, with MoEHE endorsement and implementation in collaboration with Strategy Hub.
