Introduction

Peter Mackenzie Smith

This book derives from the contributions and discussions held at the conference ‘Higher Education in the GCC States: building economies, societies and nations’, which was organised by the London Middle East Institute of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London in November 2007. They are supplemented by additional material considered by the organisers as being relevant to the theme and arising from discussion sessions at the conference.

The rationale for the conference was that it was appropriate to consider at this time the rapid expansion of higher education in the six member countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and to review the ways in which each country was designing and implementing this expansion and the reform programmes that underpin it. Each country is pursuing its own route in developing tertiary education, but there are common trends and themes which the conference sought to identify and share. This introduction seeks to reflect these common considerations and to examine their manifestations in the individual countries of the GCC.

No review of the current higher education systems in the Gulf countries should ignore the definitive World Bank development report,The Road not Traveled, published by the Bank in early 2008. A digest and commentary of the report’s findings by Mari Luomi are therefore part of this volume. Its main conclusion, which covers all levels of education in the Middle East and North Africa, is that the education systems in the region require a new approach to reform, based on an emphasis on public accountability and incentives and on seeking to close the gap between the supply of educated individuals and both internal and external labour demand. These two principal strands appear to a greater or lesser degree in most of the contributions to this book, albeit under different headings. This is perhaps best reflected in the emphasis on the development of independent quality assurance systems in almost all the countries involved and on the awareness of the need for greater relevance of equipping graduates with skills and capabilities more in tune with the requirements of business, industry and the world of employment, both within the region and on an international level.

The main themes in higher education in the region that emerge from this book, generally illustrated from experience and observation in individual countries, are:

• Expansion from a small historical base,

• Access to higher education and the issue of gender,

• Quality and accountability,

• International links and partnerships,

• Meeting private and public sector employment needs,

• Nationalisation of the labour force, especially in the smaller Gulf states.

All these areas are interlinked, with some cross-cutting dimensions which touch upon each. So, for example, most Gulf universities and colleges interact with partner institutions in Europe, North America and Australia or are branches of them, as in the case illustrated by the chapter on the British University in Dubai, and these relationships have assumed profound importance for all aspects of tertiary education. A cross-cutting theme, emphasised by the World Bank and by other contributors, is the impact on the institutions of the region of globalisation in general and of the desire to create knowledge economies in particular. Another cross-cutting theme is t