Monday 20 December 2010

Higher education cost in the UAE

I attended a conference with NAPO on the future of education in the UAE. I enjoyed the conference very much. One of the lectures was very interesting and an eye opener, the speaker mentioned the cost of higher education in the UAE, and the figure per EFT is startling. Thus I have some suggestions here if applied properly may reduce the cost tremendously.

1. To increase the participation of local industry in the education field. For example in USA and other advanced countries the major companies fund some projects or buildings at the higher education institutions in that country, and many awards or buildings are named after the company or even the person that donated the funds from the community. The reason they do this is because these higher education institutions are the ones that contribute to the society and bring out the best in the young adults. This requires a whole new strategy and a team of people either from the local government or a special company to be set up for this purpose. As you may know local companies do not pay tax, and do not contribute to the society at all, and on top of this they higher imported labour that actually take out money from the country and send it overseas, the country thus loses. This will be their contribution to the society.

2. Allow foreign students to study at the higher education institutions, for example there should be a quota of say 8-10%. These students will be paying commercial fees and the colleges and universities will benefit, plus it would let the local student learn from the hard working of these foreigners and probably work harder.

3. Share the faculty between the colleges and universities and do satellite campuses.

4. Insist on graduate outcomes. Rather than just % GPA

the thing is< who is listening.

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