No shortage of wealth

von Christopher Davidson

The higher education sector is undergoing rapid expansion and transformation in the six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The GCC is far from homogeneous, with varying socioeconomic and demographic conditions impacting on the sector's development. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, and Kuwait enjoy the highest gross domestic products per capita in the world, while Bahrain and Oman are somewhat indigent. Even Saudi Arabia, despite its vast hydrocarbon reserves, struggles to develop given its much larger indigenous population. Nevertheless, there are certain common issues and pathologies in higher education that affect or afflict all of the GCC states.

All have had to expand from a very small historical base and even today most university students are first generation. All also suffer from access problems to higher education, most notably the gender issue in societies that very often do not offer completely equal opportunities. There exists too the question of what to teach, and how to go about teaching it. As campuses are built and physical infrastructure is put in place, there are also mounting concerns over quality control and accountability. How will teaching standards be enforced and how will research output be measured? International partnerships are equally central to the GCC universities. Some have attracted big name western institutions while others are tied to unaccredited institutions from other parts of the world. As of yet, there is little uniformity. The sector has also been routinely criticised across the region for failing to meet the needs of either the public or the private sector: strategies for labour nationalisation have been largely unsuccessful as the proportion of the workforce made up by nationals continues to shrink.

With regards to the historical base, the first universities in Saudi Arabia were not built until the late 1950s, and until the mid 1960s in Kuwait. The UAE did not build a university until the late 1970s. Furthermore, the first ministries for education in the Gulf were only established in the early 1970s. This was a period of transition from educational provision by the religious community to more secular educational provision by the state. With no shortage of wealth courtesy of oil exports, many new universities and higher colleges were built, but the majority of the faculty had to be recruited from elsewhere in the Arab world. This reliance on expatriates remains an issue today, with too few nationals entering the education profession due to its traditionally low status compared to family businesses, military careers, and government posts. 

Specific female-only institutions established

Access to higher education has dramatically improved since the 1970s, with segregated sections of universities (as has been the case in Oman and Sharjah) allowing women to attend without upsetting traditional family values. More recently, specific female-only institutions have been established, including the UAE's federal Zayed University that has branches in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Only at the postgraduate level are male students admitted. The difficulty that remains is access to overseas scholarships for females. They may be eligible to enter competitions and win funded places, or they may be admitted onto degree programmes that feature a year abroad, but very often there is a struggle within the family, as many parents are reluctant to allow their daughters to travel unaccompanied to other countries. For decades this has been an important advantage for Gulf males.

Curriculum development has been problematic. Initially the Gulf universities relied wholly on imported teaching materials, often from Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon. A lot of these contained examples and information not entirely compatible with the needs of Gulf higher education. More recently there has also been much discussion of how to go about teaching in Gulf universities. Rote learning and traditional lectures are gradually being replaced by seminar based teaching that revolves around meaningful class discussions and a promotion of critical thinking.

Enforcement of minimum standards difficult

The new campuses are impressive. Lavish constructions and big budgets have ensured a pleasant educational environment and good resources for learning. However, there is a question mark over the enforcement of minimum standards. Although there are exceptions, in most cases ministries have been slow to develop quality control bodies to monitor curriculum development and teaching practises. Moreover, as of yet there are no effective measures of research output or quality. Research grants are easily won, but then there is rarely any follow-up, with few requirements on the researcher to work towards a tangible output. There is also a concern over the lack of faculty and student governance. Student bodies do exist, but most often they have little effective power. Similarly, faculty councils tend to be little more than consultation sessions and rarely can problems be raised collectively given restrictions on the rights of association in many of the GCC states.

The GCC has now become home to several branch campuses of leading international universities, while existing universities have invariably sought partner institutions. These have included New York University and La Sorbonne (in Abu Dhabi), Texas A&M, Georgetown, and Virginia Commonwealth (in Qatar), and a plethora of Australian and second tier British universities (in Dubai). At present it is too early to tell how effective these relationships will become. There are undoubtedly misgivings about attaching a brand name to a Gulf-based institution that may not live up to the standards of the home institution. There are also concerns about reputational smears: Connecticut University attempted to open a branch in Dubai in 2006 but had to withdraw due to protests amongst the US student body on the grounds that the UAE was an anti-Semitic state. Indeed, a number of the Gulf states continue to maintain an Israeli boycott office. Similarly embarrassing, a Gulf ruler recently attempted to fund a prestigious chair at a major US ivy league university, but again the student body intervened, complaining of both anti-Semitism and a lack of human rights awareness in the Gulf. Other complications occur, especially with regards to the teaching of politics in the new branch campuses of international universities: discussion of domestic political systems and tribal history is sensitive, and in most cases impossible for expatriate teachers to attempt. International history is equally complex, with teachers unwilling to raise potentially controversial subjects such as the holocaust or the Palestinian intifada.

Expatriate population

By far the biggest test for higher education will be its role in helping to ameliorate the labour nationalisation problem in the GCC. There are massive expatriate populations in all of the member states, and especially in the smaller Gulf states where expatriates can outnumber nationals by more than ten to one in the work place. Certainly, the only solution is for the national population to be better educated and better qualified than the foreign competition. But this is not easy: Gulf nationals will need to be able to fight for jobs alongside bilingual Lebanese and Egyptian expatriates who have benefited from an established, accredited university education in their home country. If the GCC higher education sector does not improve soon, there is a concern that GCC nationals will be left as bystanders while expatriates continue to fill the plethora of employment opportunities being created by the new post-oil Gulf economies.