The recent cabinet decision to allocate additional funding for 3,000 students to attend government universities and colleges deserves to be lauded as an indication of the UAE’s commitment to delivering higher educational opportunities for UAE nationals. But while finance continues to overshadow national debates on higher education, this sector has yet to face up to the other challenges that will enable it to consolidate more than three decades of achievements.
As the higher education landscape unfolds, it becomes clear that the UAE is turning into a regional destination for students from around the world seeking quality learning in a wide range of institutions, many of them enjoying international accreditation.
Since the founding of the nation in 1971, the UAE Federal Government has always demonstrated its commitment to higher education as being critical to achieving sustainable change. Development plans adopted by successive UAE Governments have recognised the need to develop and expand higher education to meet the rising demands of a growing economy.
Last year’s UAE strategic plan includes significant references to national capacity building in higher education. The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research set out its ambitious visions for taking the sector into new frontiers of development to ensure that graduates are able to handle evolving market conditions.
I believe that this is a major challenge that our institutions of higher education will have to grapple with as the UAE increasingly becomes a global business hub requiring a new generation of UAE nationals with high-calibre training in a variety of different fields of professional knowledge.
Naturally, if the UAE’s universities and colleges are to expand they will need to develop quality programmes that both respond to international trends in higher education and meet the changing needs of the national market. The Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the government agency responsible for regulation, licensing and programme accreditation, has been instrumental in applying the highest international standards in this regard.
The Ministry’s policies have ensured that only the finest institutions with the best programmes are granted licences to operate. But as the experience of the past two decades has demonstrated, the largest part of the burden of ensuring success lies more on the institutions than on the regulators, for the simple reason that they are the ones who have to translate the Government guidelines into concrete programmes.
But the challenge does not start and end at the gates of the universities; it is equally as important that primary and secondary public education are reformed to make them more compatible with university entrance. Too frequently, students arriving for higher education need remedial courses in a wide range of areas – including English language, information technologies, and critical thinking skills – before they are ready to undertake their studies.
In particular, problem-solving and critical thinking-based learning methods have been identified as being of major concern. The issue here is not about rote learning methods, but rather about managing knowledge to serve specific personal and professional goals as students move up into higher education.
The Al Ghad project that the Ministry of Education began to implement a year ago with the first 50 schools – and more to follow later – following a new curriculum in English, is a promising example of how to prepare public school pupils for higher education. But there is still room for improvement, especially by encouraging more collaboration and co-operation between the schools and the universities.
Finding the right synthesis between the local and the global in higher education has been a thorny issue in many countries in the region, including the UAE. Most of our colleges and universities have significant global components, whether in the courses they teach or their faculty staff. As the UAE strengthens its position as a global commercial and cultural hub, it will become essential that our institutions of higher education produce graduates capable of working for regional and international companies – while preserving, of course, their national identities.
It is clear that there is more to the development and expansion of higher education than simple issues of funding. The relationship between schools, universities and the needs of the economy has to be understood. It is an unbroken circle; changing one arc on its own will never be sufficient.
Providing new opportunities for the young men and women of the UAE to attend university or college confirms the Government’s commitment to education. But to build upon the achievements of the past three decades, other challenges need to be attended to as well.
Muhammad Ayish is the Dean of the College Of Communications at the University of Sharjah
Muhammad Ayish