The regional political impact of education in the Gulf can easily be overlooked as the educationalists work at their focused task of matching the supply of skilled students to what the workplace needs. But while they work at this, they are also a vital part of building a confident and stable Gulf population that will be able to withstand the violent pressures of the turbulent politics in the region.
The Gulf states have a clear educational strategy of building new societies based on the knowledge economy. They have rightly planned to avoid basing their future economies on heavy manufacturing and industrial sectors, since companies working in those sectors will increasingly be looking for cheaper labour around the world in order to remain competitive.
Strategists in Gulf states are well aware that if they followed this route they land themselves in a trap of trying and failing to compete with countries with much larger populations and much cheaper labour costs. Instead they are looking at building a new generation of Gulf nationals working in sectors with high intellectual property, contributing value through their brains and their skills.
As Dr Abdullah Karam, Director General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, said this week at a UAE/UK roundtable on education for employability that "we have to change our mindset", referring to a shift to bringing more high value skills into the population.
Indeed, he added that it was not just the task of further education, but such thinking needs to permeate all through education, even at kindergarten and primary stages. In many ways Dubai is leading the Gulf in this process of looking at developing new skills so as to have new sectors in its economy, since the oil industry in the emirate accounts for less than five per cent of its economy and it has to find an alternative quickly.
One of the benefits that Dubai hopes to achieve through its focus on knowledge and education is that the UAE can become a regional centre for education and training in the courses that will add value to the whole of the Gulf's economy.
A lot of educational and social planning necessarily sounds very specific: a bank will look for students with good skills they can take into banking, and an IT company wants people who have studied the IT industry and also got strong experience. The educational establishments speak of how they want to develop links with the employers in the region, and how to tailor their courses to what the employers and civil society want.
But this technical matching of educational supply and demand is part of a massive social development, with powerful political consequences. It has only been in the past few years that the first generation of UAE students educated completely in the UAE, have entered the job market, and their full impact will take may years to show itself.
These Twenty-Somethings from the Gulf are the start of a very different Gulf which will only become obvious after decades and after they play a fuller part in the society. They will be much more open, since they have grown up in a cosmopolitan society, in which satellite TV, the internet and mobile phones are integral to how they live. It will also be a Gulf that is eager to be a part of the global community, playing a full part in international affairs.
This more globally-linked Gulf population might have very different perspectives on how to tackle the region's problems. They will probably be as tough as anyone on the requirement for justice and fairness, and see no reason for Arabs to be treated any different from anyone else in the world's forums. So for example they will remain very firm on the requirements for a just peace in Palestine.
They are likely to have very strong motivation on environmental and sustainability issues, since they have grown up thinking of these issues as normal and important. However, they may also be considerably less politically motivated than the present generation. They have already become more focused on business and themselves, rather than the regional political issues.
However, they are likely to get involved in building civil society. As the Gulf societies become larger and more complicated, they are giving more space for more specialised interest groups to develop and start working for their particular interests: which may be on all sorts of different activities, such as culture or leisure, as well as social improvement. It is vital that the next generation is able to feel involved.
Their present lack of political motivation will not matter if they are socially involved and working to be part of the modern society. In fact, this sense of involvement and pride in what is going on is very evident today in the graduates coming into the work place.
This involvement is a very important asset that the Gulf states will be able to work with and ensure that their populations remain committed to continuing development.
By Francis Matthew, Editor at Large