DUBAI, 19 November 2003 — Arab education has long been criticized for rote learning methods and failing to foster critical thinking, but Gulf states are embarking on ambitious projects to change all that. No longer is Lebanon’s American University of Beirut, once dubbed the Harvard of the Middle East, the only icon of institutions teaching students an education grounded in a Western curriculum.
Today there are American universities in Cairo, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar and Sharjah, branches of British universities have mushroomed and Dubai has opened a “Knowledge Village”, an education and training hub.
And enrolment at the new universities has increased as more students are thinking twice about going to the United States.
An Arab Human Development Report published by the United Nations estimated that the number of Arabs attending US universities fell 30 percent between 1999 and 2002.
It is of no surprise that Arab students have opted to complete their education abroad, but with greater opportunities to stay at home, students need to know if the new US-inspired teaching in this part of the world is up to the same standards as in the West.
“No doubt the American education is much better than the Arab university curriculum, because Arab curriculums are really old,” says Ihab, a graduate of the American University in Dubai (AUD).
“When the American University in Dubai opened (in 1995), they were using old curriculums but they were improving fast to a point that after a few months the requirements to graduate changed,” he added.
Ihab says his colleagues who opted to complete their last term in the United States found the curriculum easier there than in Dubai.
AUD president Lance de Masi says that his university’s objective is to offer the “American educational experience as it would be received in the United States.
“The hallmark of American education entails the development of a whole person, of critical reasoning and communication skills all of which are alive and well in AUD, and I think the region is perfectly accepting of that approach to education.”
AUD which has 1,808 students enrolled for both undergraduate and graduate courses saw an increase in the number of students after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Meanwhile, the Qatar Foundation is establishing a giant private “Education City” in Qatar that includes top tier US colleges such as Weill-Cornell medical shool, Texas A and M University, Virginia Commonwealth and well-known think-tanks like Rand.
The offer in Qatar is the same as at the mother institution, says Ahmed Al-Dosari, head of information at the Foundation.
“It is the same degree, curriculum, instructors come from the mother campus, and they have the same admission and graduation requirements like the campus in the US,” says Dosari.
An ex-recruitment consultant now working in a prominent think-tank in Dubai said market expectations are high and the experience a student receives overseas differs considerably from the home campus.
“Though there are some good institutions that have established themselves in the Gulf, they are a long way from offering the education ‘package’ that being enrolled at a university in the United States offers,” she said.
Students are therefore not receiving the added bonus of being on campus, interacting with international students, having access to all the faculty members, research facilities or being exposed to a different culture, she explained.
