Arab youth: the challenge of tomorrow

Middle East, The, August-Sept, 2008 by Pat Lancaster, Pamela Ann Smith, Thomas Land

Top officials and academics attending the recent Arab Education Forum in Morocco were much encouraged by this development. The three-day forum brought together organisations such as the Association of Arab Universities (AAU), the Federation of the Universities of the Islamic World, the Arab Bureau for Education in the Gulf States and the United Nations' Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation.

The educational development model now widely adopted by the region began rive years ago in Jordan as an experiment in private-public partnerships intended to enlist world-class businesses and universities in the service of Arab education. It has attracted keen competition for involvement from North America, Europe, Australia and elsewhere.

Further interest is generated by a $10bn fund launched in 2007 by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai and prime minister of the UAE, to enable students, scholars and scientists in a wide range of disciplines to write, research and translate books into Arabic.

This is to correct the imbalance explored by the 2003 Arab Human Development Report that found the Arab language "in crisis" due in part to the inadequate educational and cultural facilities available to the estimated 300m population of the region. That annual report issued by the UN Development Programme comprises an overview of assessments compiled by a group of eminent Arab academics. They also blame widespread discrimination against women, particularly in higher education for retarding social and economic advancement in the Arab world.

Their report set off a feverish, sustained higher education expansion programme originating in the wealthy Gulf states and extending through the Arab world. More than 15 private universities have been opened during the past rive years and many more are being planned in the GCC states.

These pioneering institutions enjoy substantial government subsidies and rely on the curricula and examination standards of top foreign universities, mostly American, which are involved with them in mutually profitable partnerships.

Qatar, has built an entire Education City in Doha, where students flock to obtain prestigious degrees in medicine, business, computer science, engineering, fine arts, journalism and communications. The tuition fees charged by these institutions are the same as those in America, but Qatari citizens are reimbursed through sponsorship by local corporations or scholarships awarded by the country's Supreme Education Council.

Bahrain has brought in Britain's Brunel University to collaborate in engineering instruction, while Abu Dhabi has lured the Sorbonne and Insead Business School of France to the Gulf.

Abu Dhabi has also announced a five-year, $15bn research and training initiative to develop clean energy technologies, including the construction of the world's biggest hydrogen power plant. And it is investing a further $22bn in a science-based programme to build the first "green" city for 500,000 people and 1,500 businesses that would generate no pollution.