It is such a shame to see that university graduates in the Arab world tend to be poorly educated. Looking at the situation I do wish that there were a balance between current global scientific advancement and the expertise of graduates that leave educational institutions in the Middle East.
Arab countries have different needs in an array of fields. In order to fulfill these needs we require educators and scholars to help us on our journey of reform and development.
The 1999 Nobel Chemistry Prize Laureate Dr. Ahmed Zewail spoke about his vision of a future scientific and technical Arab world in a lecture at American University in Cairo (AUC) in 2004. He said, “Millions of research papers have been published in annuals and monthly magazines in the last few years. Out of these 30 percent have been published in the US, 34 percent in European countries, 20 percent in Asian countries, and one percent in a tiny country like Israel. On the other hand, the Arab world collectively produced nothing.”
Perhaps if our education institutions, regardless of whether they are private or public, adopted the “Open Ceiling Approach” we would have more researchers. Research opportunities would thus be created and made available to intellectuals, academics and students.
By implementing this system academics would be able to conduct theoretical and practical studies in a range of scientific, social and humanitarian fields without restraints or conditions. Political researchers would definitely be able to help in developing reform strategies and projects.
But for research to be successful organizations need to have offices, guidance, libraries and resources.
Economists who do research aimed at developing national income through manufacturing of goods and services require bigger investments in both material and human wealth. Moves toward developing an atmosphere of scientific research cannot succeed without support from governments that can provide information and the required research tools.
We need to establish research centers and official research bodies that are connected to government ministries and are able to outline policies and goals. Research centers need to be connected to humanitarian, political, cultural and social organizations locally, regionally and internationally.
Most importantly, we need to support these centers by creating an infrastructure for scientific research. We need to build laboratories and provide appropriate technological equipment and tools to carry out short-term and extended scientific research whenever needed.
We really need to follow the rest of the world in the way they are advancing in the fields of science and technology. We need progress to improve the lives of our citizens and in order to achieve progress we need to nurture an academic culture. The future Arab citizen must be able to view and deal with his personal, political and cultural life through a scientific prism. The responsibility of materializing these aims primarily rests in our schools, colleges and universities.
Media outlets must play an important role in spreading the scientific culture by highlighting achievements of our scientists and intellectuals.
Governments need to create funds to finance research, and universities need to dedicate larger parts of their budgets for this. The more financial and material resources we have, the more compelling will be our research output.
