Partnerships between European and ‘Arab spring’ universities will be vital to improving higher education in the fledgling democracies, an international conference has heard. Speaking in Copenhagen at the European Association for International Education’s annual conference in mid-September, a panel including lecturers, ministers and education campaigners from Arab countries said that academic cooperation with Europe was vital in a period of transition.
Dissatisfaction among students with overcrowded, low-quality courses offering few job opportunities had been a significant driver of the Arab Spring uprisings, says Hassan Diab, Lebanon’s minister of education. There were 7.6 million varsity students across the 22 Arab League countries in 2008, up from 3 million in 1998, but reform is needed to guarantee greater course quality, he says.
Classes at some Egyptian universities contain as many as 1,000 students to one professor, the debate on September 15 heard. “Governments have resorted to increasing quantity, but the real issue is quality — there are poor educational standards,” says Prof. Diab, professor of electrical engineering at the American University of Beirut. “We would not be serving the Arab region if we continue as we are now. The issue of quality is extremely important to address — we need better quality assurance.”
Emphasis on rote learning is also harming the quality of graduates leaving Arab universities, says Diab. “Our educational techniques do not promote critical-thinking skills. We need these because we have to train students to solve problems that do not exist at the moment.”
Jomana Shdefat, assistant professor in education at Al al-Bayt University in Mafraq, Jordan, said student-and staff-exchange programmes with Europe could help break down the traditional gender roles prevalent in the Arab sector. Comments Shdefat, a native Bedouin who was the first person in her family to attend university: “They need to be exposed to European and American models of teaching. They need to return to Jordan with new ideas of scholarship. Many students come to take degrees without any aims — it’s a type of tourism. Students need to know why they are studying a subject. Girls are smarter in this way than boys, but there are no job opportunities for them because they are women. In my career, because I am a woman, I am always seen as second class.”
With 65 percent of the Arab population under the age of 25, and with the recent popular uprisings being partly driven by demands for higher-skilled jobs, university reform is the key to building social cohesion, says Salah Khalil, an education campaigner. An Egyptian businessman and philanthropist who is attempting to compile an online database of key social science textbooks for use in the post-Mubarak regime, Khalil says a system of US or European-style endowments for Arab universities is needed.
“It is embarrassing to be part of a world where there are all these riches, but the amount of philanthropy here is dwarfed by the US. This kind of thinking needs to be encouraged,” says Khalil.
Salim Al Malik, supervisor for international relations at the ministry of higher education in Saudi Arabia, which has 1 million students including 135,000 foreign nationals, says individual academics should take the lead in forming the partnerships the Arab sector needs. “Building links is not done institution to institution — it’s done between individuals. Then you will build those relationships between institutions,” he says.
Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education