JEDDAH, 18 June 2006 — A new system of teaching is being planned in one of the Kingdom’s new private medical colleges following a cooperation agreement signed here yesterday.
Described as the first such cooperation in the Middle East, the deal was signed between Batterjee Medical College (BMC) and Germany’s University of Tubingen.
The accord involves teaching students on the basis of case studies instead of the traditional method of professors giving lectures.
The BMC, which has already started enrolling students for its inaugural year, is all set to commence its first semester in September.
“The new college will have an innovative problem-based curriculum and the emphasis will be on case studies,” professor Horst Dieter Becker of the University of Tubingen told Arab News on the sidelines of the signing ceremony.
“It’s a kind of Harvard teaching system developed in the United States and Germany in the past 10 years,” he said. “In fact, we can further develop the teaching method by adjusting it to the local situation. Our university will extend technical support, with occasional visits by our professors.”
Becker said German experts and specialists have been visiting the Saudi German Hospitals Group’s (SGH) various health care facilities over the years. SGH President Sobhi Batterjee said Becker has been associated with the group for the past 16 years and his future visits would be of great benefit to the new college in particular and the group in general.
The cooperation between the two institutions will be of great significance since the Kingdom’s sectors related to education, business and culture were very much influenced by the United States and the UK in the past. Most of the highly educated Saudis in the government and private sectors had their education in the West, he pointed out.
“Over 10,000 Saudi students graduated in the United States in the recent past and 6,000 more headed to that country in the last few months,” Batterjee said.
“This agreement means a lot ... it will mean that Germany is not known for BMW and Mercedes cars, and now the 2006 World Cup football, alone, but education too,” he added.
Such cooperation agreements should be welcome in a country where education is making rapid strides, and especially to the SGH, which is establishing health care facilities in the Gulf, Yemen and Egypt, aside from the Kingdom.
The SGH plans to establish 13 colleges with a total capacity of 4,000 seats. “Our students will be both boys and girls, both nationals and expatriates,” said Khalid Batterjee, vice president of SGHG.
Starting this September, 200 students will be selected from hundreds of applicants in four colleges — medical, physiotherapy, hospital administration and nursing, he said, adding that the medical syllabus will cover five years of teaching plus one year of internship.
Hundreds of inquiries have been coming in from students and admissions will be finalized during July and August, he said.
The University of Tubingen is 500 years old. It has some 2,500 medical and 22,500 other students currently on its rolls, said professor Claus D. Claussen, director of radiology clinic at the university.
The university, with 8,500 employees, has one of Germany’s largest and highly ranked hospitals that treats 70,000 inpatients and 300,000 outpatients a year.
