As Derek Bok, the former President of Harvard University, once remarked: “If you think education is expensive, try ignorance.” Nowhere is this observation more applicable than in the UAE, where several schools have been hit so dramatically by inflation that they are considering closing their doors, potentially leaving thousands of pupils without a place to learn. As we report today, Dr F A Wasil, director of Asian schools at Global Education Management Systems (Gems), has said that several of the Gems schools must be allowed to raise their fees above limits prescribed by the Government if they are to remain open.
The Ministry of Education has capped tuition fee increases to 30 per cent over three years to protect expatriate workers from inflationary pressures. But these measures have seriously backfired. To attract additional teachers and to help their current staff to cope with inflation, schools have increased teacher salaries by 76 per cent in the past four years. In the face of an influx of new students each year, schools have spent millions of dirhams to expand their facilities. But as construction costs have increased by 165 per cent over the same period, expansion makes little sense if schools cannot make corresponding increases in tuition fees to finance them. “There has been a quantum jump in the economy... an abnormal increase in every sense. But the school fees have not corresponded,” Dr Wasil told The National.
While there may be some exaggeration by for-profit institutions, allowing schools to increase fees to remain open is not simply a question of allowing society to endure temporary “growing pains”. If fewer educational opportunities are available for the sons and daughters of expatriate workers, the growth of the UAE’s entire society may grind to a halt. Whether from the Philippines, Britain or India, every parent who sacrifices the comforts of home to live and work in the UAE does so in the hope of building something better for their children. But this very aspiration that once made skilled workers flock to the UAE may now force them to leave: in particular, those whose home economies in South Asia have seen continued growth despite a global economic slowdown may increasingly take their chances at home rather then risk their children’s future by remaining in the UAE.
At this time in our development, when the nation hopes to diversify its economy and create growth from the private sector, we can ill afford to lose these valuable people. The UAE may have 80 or 90 years’ worth of oil beneath its sands, but history shows that a vibrant and aspirational middle class is the engine for every enduring economy.
While educational spending is often described as an investment in the future, for the UAE the equation is different. Most expatriate pupils educated here will probably not live or work in this country when their schooling is completed. But by insisting on a quality standard of education for the children of all who work here, the UAE invests in the labour that makes its present possible. If the Government will not subsidise schools directly to help them to address inflation, it must remove limits on tuition increases. To do otherwise not only endangers the prospects for children in our nation, but also the future of the nation itself.