More than just a figurehead, Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak has had an active hand in some of the greatest advances in Emirati higher education.
Now, he wants to see even greater reform, calling for better funding and further improvements in the school system to make sure young Emiratis are ready for university and beyond.
In 1988, he set up the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), which now enrol 16,000 Emirati students, and four years later became the country’s Minister for Higher Education and Scientific Research, and has been the cabinet minister responsible for the sector ever since.
In 1998, he founded Zayed University, and he remains that institution’s president. He is also the chancellor of the HCT and the UAE University.
Sheikh Nahyan turned to reality the belief of the late Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan that state university education should be in English and available to men and women. The HCT, Zayed and UAE universities have a combined roll of more than 30,000 students – 60 per cent of them women. The minister regularly visits all three universities, whether it is to open a conference or hand out awards to high-achieving students.
Under his watch, private higher education provision has also increased dramatically and now encompasses about 50 institutions, ranging from technical colleges to a fashion university, with a total of more than 55,000 students.
In recent years, however, growing concerns about funding have cast a shadow over the universities he heads. At Zayed University, for example, the annual budget has been frozen at Dh210 million (US$57m) since 2002, despite high inflation and a 50 per cent increase in student numbers over the past six years.
Earlier this year, Sheikh Nahyan told the Federal National Council that thousands of young Emiratis were being denied places each year because there was no money to teach them. Staff were leaving in droves because wages were not keeping pace with inflation.
But in an interview at the majlis of his Abu Dhabi palace, he says an end to the funding shortfall is in sight.
It is likely that officials will soon confirm a new budget formula in which funding will be linked to the number of students enrolled at the institutions, meaning that budgets for the next academic year are likely to be much more generous, he says.
“For the first time, we’ll have an adequate budget for Zayed University, UAE University and the Higher Colleges of Technology. Hopefully we are coming out of our educational recession that we have suffered from for a while.
“The Government has been receptive to our requests that we should link the budget to the number of students – it will be a student-driven budget.”
While not finally agreed upon, Sheikh Nahyan says, the new formula is close to approval. Once that happens, he says, the UAE will become the only country in the Gulf to allocate funding according to the number of students enrolled.
“I don’t know of any country in this part of the world. There are some other countries – in South America some countries do that,” he says.
The minister insists that the Government understands the need for federal universities to operate in “a global labour market” and also to improve salaries to recruit and retain high-quality staff.
“The competition to recruit good-quality professionals is becoming more difficult, so it’s important … our packages are equal and attractive to those who we want to recruit,” he says.
While a solution to the funding issue is in sight, other challenges remain. Many of the young Emiratis who join government universities have been inadequately prepared at school for the task of starting a degree or diploma course. In particular, they lack the language skills needed to study at an institution where the instruction is in English, meaning that money and time are wasted on foundation courses to bring them up to scratch.
The problems of the state school system that cause this are issues Sheikh Nahyan spoke about when, between 2004 and 2006 as Minister of Education, he was additionally responsible for schools as well as universities. He called for a reform of the sector and now says much remains to be done.
When asked if schools are preparing students adequately for university, he says: “Absolutely not.”
“We spend one-third of our budget on just preparing these students from public education to be able to follow our standards and our curriculum and even then a lot of people fail,” he says.
“There is a lot that needs to be changed in schools: the culture, the way they teach, the resources available.”
He admits that changing the culture of government schools will not be easy. A range of initiatives are being introduced, among them the Public-Private Partnership programme in which private-sector companies are brought in to help run schools.
“We all know that people resist change. We all know people want the status quo. They are happy doing what they’re doing,” he says.
“The change curve goes down first. It takes commitment and leadership and backing and support to keep your head down when others are losing theirs, when people are criticising you. That’s when leadership is required.
“Then the curve starts going up and people realise the change is for the better of everybody.”
In the PPP schools, as in the similar Madares Al Ghad or future schools, English is used for teaching science and mathematics. With English also the medium of instruction at government universities, is Arabic under threat?
Sheikh Nahyan says such fears are “shortsighted”.
“We should not be blind about this issue. We have to be part of human development and this is part of the development of the world,” he says.
“Whether we like it or not, English is the medium of knowledge, the language of science, of technology.
“There is a rapid development of knowledge in all fields and it’s all in English. You cannot keep up unless you know the English language.
“They attribute the development of India partly to the fact that English is one of the official languages. I don’t see any Indian who has lost their identity or culture. We should not try to mix these things. I don’t think Arabic will ever be threatened by other languages.
“I don’t see, among the people who have graduated, that they’ve lost their Arabic skills or that their pride or their commitment to their language has been weakened.”
While the UAE’s higher education sector has expanded hugely in size, institutions with a strong research base that offer students the chance to work towards a PhD remain rare. In a speech five years ago, Sheikh Nahyan said the UAE had “not yet formed a research culture”. It was a situation, he said, that “must change”.
That change is on the horizon. Some universities opening here, such as the Paris-Sorbonne and New York University, have promised active research programmes.
And in March, Sheikh Nahyan announced the creation of the National Authority for Scientific Research, which has an annual budget of about Dh100m for individual researchers, colleges, universities and companies.
“When the authority starts functioning, there will be grants for research that will encourage research whether in the private sector or the public sector,” he says. “It shows that the Government has realised the importance of research and of advancement of the country and of keeping up with the development around us. It will help to maintain the standard of living and ensure the continued growth of the economy.”
To further encourage research, he suggests that his ministry’s Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA) may look less favourably on institutions that fail to extend themselves beyond teaching.
“If you take the [United] States, research activity and postgraduate study are part of the accreditation,” he says.
“I’m not ruling that out. At the right time it might be part of it, but before we implement this we have to provide the resources so that people have the resources to carry out the research.”
Daniel Bardsley