I love it when journalists send me questions for interview, however the below questions were well thought out and very philosophical, this to-be journalist is going to be a world leader.
Hope you will like what i said:
1/
Please tell us about yourself and your background ( Education, work
experiences) well my
aspiration here is to have a PHD in education, but I had to stop at the masters
level and continued to study various subjects on my own to accumulate more
knowledge about the field. Coming out of the finance and accounting was
not easy, and building my career at the age of 45 to become a real
educationalist took a lot of work.
2/
What incentives encouraged you to become an entrepreneur? In actual fact I don’t consider
myself an entrepreneurs, I consider myself a person with an idea to help kids
figure out their future path, and help them find what they like to do in life,
and guide through to place them at a university or a college that matches their
potential and their budget. However, to do this I have to invest, and
that took a lot of courage, as it was not easy to find the money, even though I
had some but it was not that great to start a business, so I had to borrow, and
being great in the finance field I was able to stretch that money until we
started to earn from our idea. But doing the idea was for a reason, I
didn’t want to work as an employee for the rest of my life, I was at an age
where I wanted to travel and see places, meet more people and have a great
time, also I wanted to be a writer, and all of this could not have happened if
I stayed working for others.
3/
Please introduce the company you established few years ago and let us
know your global activities ? as
I mentioned above, the company was the fruits of being an eternal student, the
mishaps that happened to me whenever I travelled to study, questions like where
I am going, how to get there, who will do my visa, do I need a bank account,
who will take me to the university, is it far? where will I live, will I find
friends? Can I borrow to pay for my fees? Is the field of study good for me or not?
These questions made me swear that I will not let any student that comes my way
face these issues again. And because I was honest, people opened up to me
and started to come for advise. My success is the success of my students,
and because they succeeded, they brought their family, their friends and anyone
that ask them on how to go to a university. of course when we started
there was no google, and no social media, nowadays, we do get many students,
but I must confess, they are more advanced in their questions, and that gave us
more depth and made our job that much more interesting.
4/
Why educating others about education is so important to you? to me going to a university is not
just to study, but to have a personality, and to learn about the country and
its people. The student needs to be a well-rounded individual, who should
be going places, travelling, learning, and socialising. I am all for studying
abroad, if one can afford it, as the amount of learning one can achieve is
tremendous, no matter how much learning one does in one’s own country, the
stuff he or she will learn about in another country will surpass the learning
if done at home. Learning to be independent, shopping for groceries,
paying bills, packing the suitcase and so on, knowing how to stay safe,
avoiding dangerous places, cleaning the flat and so on; that will not happen if
one stayed home. I enjoyed my studies abroad, and I think every parent
should provide this opportunity to ones kids to do the same. Of course we
have to equip them too, we should not think that a 16 year old is going to go
abroad and succeed, we need to make sure that all the important stuff are covered.
5/
Tell us about the feed back you get from your clients after they achieve their
goals in terms of education? The
feedback is so great, and that is what encouraged us to stay in business and to
grow, we just opened a branch in Bahrain, and that too is going well; we know
that we succeeded when the same student that we helped to go for his or her
bachelors, comes back to us and ask us to help in getting offers for the
masters or the PHD. That by itself is proof that we are good, and that we
are remembered. We never asked our students to provide testimonials, but
we did that few months ago, and here is what one student had said (see attached
email)
6/
How many exhibitions and conferences do you attend annually? Since we are in the education field,
we need to ensure that we visit universities and colleges around the world and
also see what is happening in the education field itself. In terms of
exhibitions, we do 20-25 a year, and university visits of around 6 a year, also
we attend 5 main conferences a year. this is not much, as we need to see
more. We are members of important education associations such as ICEF, ALPHE,
IALC, Study world, NAFSA, EAIE, and many others. Being part of these
organisations keeps us on our toes and encourage us to re-evaluate our
offerings.
7/
What is the main education destination for Middle Eastern students? Well, sadly its USA, then UK,
followed by Canada and Australia. We opened up new destinations like New
Zealand when we started our company, which no one had heard about, and then
Europe, and Turkey. I feel we have to experiment and we have to diversify
as students. However many students will not change their minds, and will
continue to go to the place that they think will give them the highest quality.
Now, all I need to do is suggest the country, mention its qualities and
people will follow what I tell them. I am fortunate that I arrived to
this level of trust in people’s mind, and the main reason is that I am not just
trying to sell a product, it’s a life of four ears abroad that I am planning,
so we have to be very careful.
8/
As we have seen many universities and colleges have opened branches in
UAE and are pioneers in enhancing education system here. What is the reason
behind their interest? This
is correct, and someone told me that I will have to close the business since
they all came here!! To begin with, many things are happening around the world
as we speak, people started to feel uneasy about sending a daughter or a son
away, also the countries themselves had made stringent visa rules. So the
universities were smart, instead of “Mohammed going to the mountain, the mountain
came to Mohammed” and this makes sense. However I feel the government
should make stringent rules so the same high quality education provided in the
home country is also maintained here, otherwise we will have problems in the
evaluation of the students’ documents if they wanted to go abroad for their
masters afterwards.
9/ What are
the criteria for your students to be eligible for financial assistance? We have
two types of students here, one type is the local students who will be eligible
in any case for financial aid, as the government of the UAE, wants ever UAE
student to avail of the “free education to all” concept, and then we have the
other GCC students who are also recipients of scholarships from their own
government. The third international students that will receive scholarships
from the universities themselves, or from the charity organisations provided
they show high potential and high grades. The last level is the students
that we help because they do not fall under any category mentioned above.
My team and I gather forces, and ask our friends, and relatives to chip in and
we finance some students. Of course we are not able to do a lot, and are
not able to generate funds to be sufficient for universities with high fees, so
we look for places that are not that expensive but still high quality and send
these students to them. but our favourite ones are those rich kids whose
parents will pay anything just to get them educated.
10/
What is your advice for your students? My
advice, is, don’t just study, live and enjoy, Work, and help others, and do not
forget to get reference letters from your professors and colleagues. Make
friends and take a cake to your neighbours, as one never know when we will need
them.
11/
Who is your role model and why?
I have to say its my dad (PBUH), if it wasn’t him, I will be just another
person living in a village in Bahrain.
12/
How do you see future of education world wide in terms of integration with
internet and e- education? I
am not a pessimist, and I feel that with the increase in population there will
be an increase in education seekers. I am sure teaching will be done in a
blended way, with webinars, chat rooms, online studies and face-to face for
case studies and group discussions. I cannot foresee that people are
going to stay home and only study online, but I would think that online studies
like Cursera and MOOC (and these are free courses too) will be a great help to
mothers and fathers who are not able to go abroad but want to do some studies.
That is why there are not many that is offering a full degree online, and even
if a university did, a portion will be multi-modal. Our governments
unfortunately are not approving studies by distance, but to me its alike a
turtle drawing her head inside her shell to avoid discussing the reasons, and
maintain that whatever is online is not high quality, which is not entirely
true. Organisation spend billions to prepare the courses, and we cannot
dismiss them just because some people had purchased few certificates online
from rogue universities. I would say people must beware, but I will not
advise anyone against studying by distance, I feel a category of people can
benefit of it.
13/
What is your opinion about social media? Look at me, I am a big fan of social media, I use them
all, and I would be on social media for few hours every day, its part of my
job. However like everything else, it can be a great thing and it can be
something that we may regret having. Kids must be careful, as their
future employers are watching. Be there, but be sensible is my advice to
kids. I use it to tell the students about the new stuff, but I hate to
use as a sales mechanism. I feel that it defeats the purpose. We can use
the normal advertisement to sell our services, but the social media can be kept
for interaction with students and helping them when they are in difficulty.
14/
When is the cap where utilizing social media is too much to handle? If you tell me that you can only go
on facebook, twitter, Instagram, pinterest, google plus, snachat and so on, for
an hour a day, I may get a heart attack. There should not be a cap.
Its like going on a diet, it’s a personal thing. Too much food will make you
fat, too much social media will make you a nervous wreck.
15/
Do you believe education formats need
modifications? Tell me
about it. of course I believe that the format should change. We are
not following the advancement in technology in our teaching, and that is so
sad. The educators around the world are working so hard to introduce new
methods of teaching, all we do in the middle east is to ignore and continue to
hide behind the old methods of teaching.
16/
As we know more and more people are seeking further education to enhance their
knowledge as well as learning skills. With all the hard working and too many
competition in the work force , they often are over qualified in the
job they are hired. Does that discourage young generation? I don’t think the young generations
are actually thinking of this, but most of them are also trying to work on the
skills needed for the job, which are communication skills, presentation skills,
team work and working outside the box. Lets face it, the companies will
never reject a person because of over qualification, this is said to obscure
the real reasons which are the basic skills for working that people do not
have.
17/
How do you link education and gratification? I don’t see that there is a link, there is no
limit to education, and I am a great believer in studies for life.
18/ What
are the lessons you have learned from your colleagues in Education field
and what are the lessons you have passed on? How long does this interview
need to be? I cannot count how much I had learning from my colleagues, the
field is as large as the world itself.
19/
What are the complementary steps to take if one wishes to enter
educational field? Perseverance,
perseverance and perseverance. But if one wants a rewarding field, there
isn’t one field that equates to it. one needs an open mind, and ability to
accept new methodologies.
20/
How is reading outside academic institute valuable? I am a sucker for reading, anything
that comes under my eyes will be read. It increases our horizon, and makes us
open minded. We must encourage people to read. It doesn’t have to
be a novel or a magazine, it can be a blog, a flier, a non fiction and for me
the best is autobiographies.
21/ Are
the governments in the west taking education as their priority
agenda? What are they doing to keep students in schools and universities? In
most western countries the education budget is the biggest, some go as far as
making studies free for all (local and international students like Europe and
brazil) we must follow suit to stay afloat.
22/
Many successful entrepreneurs have dropped out of school and are running
multi million dollars businesses? Does
that discourage education? No it doesn’t, tell me how many did that? Everyone
mentions Steve Jobs, and Bill gates, who didn’t drop out of school, but they
didn’t graduate as they took the subjects that they liked in university but
combined didn’t give them a full degree in one subject, which is a weakness in
the education field that we must address. Also in the early eighties we
used to listen to a song which was popular at that time “we don’t need no
education” and everyone interpreted the song as rebelling against education,
when it was actually saying “we need education” when you remove the negative
words from it “don’t” and “no”. Education (whether formal or informal) is
a way of life, and many people pursue it for the wrong reason, however we must
encourage the positive side of it.
23/ Are the
enhanced technologies providing better environments for education? I agree,
technology and education go hand by hand. If you think about it, today we
are learning more things a day than we ever did, I envy the new generation, as
they will reach to my position in less time, it took me years to reach to where
I am, and kids of 27 years old are doing much better than me as they had
everything sandwiched for them. for example I used to spend a month to
look for references in the library, now all I need to do is to write what I
want and in a flick of a second I find it on google. Think how technology
have changed the way we do things. Marvellous really.
24/
Are students in schools because of their interests or they are forced by
their guardians? One
scholar had said before that human beings are lazy by nature, I don’t agree
with that, but he was able to prove it by doing some studies. I think
parents need to push their children to start, and give them incentives, but at
the end the love to learn must come from within, and educators should find ways
to keep the students motivated.
25/
What is your dream to achieve in education platform? My dream is to teach everything that
is needed for a job in each major, the world needs people that know a bit of
everything, so a doctor for example has to also learn finance, accounting,
business, management, computing and communication studies. I would also
teach the doctors how to write well, as many times a prescription was misread
and patients where given the wrong medicine. I would love to have them do
some art or sculpturing, not that we need more artists in this world, but art
has the magic of making the person unwind.
This was one of the most interesting trips in my life, we had so much laughter and happiness, even though Rashed was a bit on the cranky side, and keeps on scratching his nose and face with something (maybe our accessories) but otherwise the crowd was great.
I must say though that I thought I was the loud one in our family who says everything and never keeps a secret but my sister Nehad proved me wrong, she is the loudest, and she told everything about us and how we behaved to the friends that we met in Doha by showing them videos and proofs of guilt !! she had videos to prove that we are the culprits of fun, including when we danced at the airport by rolling our own bags, and how my brother Hassan, who is normally a very composed person, danced a "Yola" not worrying about what the people in the airport would say or comment. That was hilarious story, "Flashmob" people cannot compete with us, I cannot remember why we were so happy then, maybe it was after we returned from my son's wedding? or was it after my daughter's wedding? God knows.
Anyway, the first day my sister's in laws invited us to their house and then to a restaurant, we of course had rented a car from the airport, dropped our things to the hotel first and then headed their way. Nehad had arrived a day earlier as her sister in law wanted to be alone with her before we all arrive and ruin the atmosphere, I think our reputation precedes us. We had so much fun, as the house is in this new place called the Pearl, which is similar to our Palm Jumeirah except its way nicer, the houses are all royalty, and the shops are for royalties as well. When we finally arrived to the house their daughter's husband took over Rashed and wouldn't give him back to us, and when we went to dinner we found that he came before us and brought his friends too just to see the little boy, he is a real crowd drawer this little Rashed, so in any case we had so much fun and laughter, met a lot of people during the dinner that finished around two in the morning. Shaz, was so happy, and Sawsan too because it was their first time in Doha, so were not accustomed to the way people are treated there. You will only know what I am saying when you actually visit. The word awesome is just a major understatement. Nehad's family really know how to take care of visitors, with their butlers, pool girls and posh cars, we know how to use these items perfectly well too. My daughter and I were fine, as we like to be pampered in any situation, one thing we cannot say to good treatment is "no". 
Over the next few days this treatment continued with lunches and dinners to the sisters as we were busy at work, but relaxed that Rashed had a lot of maids to look after him and three grannies too. In the evenings we would visit Katara with friends, and knowing how I walk with two left legs I fell off the stairs! yes I fell and hurt my knee again, guess what happened?? the people at the restaurant brought the ambulance that treated my damaged knee at the tent that my friends had rented for us, they checked my blood pressure and my sugar, put ice on the knee and the ankle, and when we finally left after hours of laughter and hearing Nehad's and Sawsan' jokes I had forgotten that my knee hurts. Now I know that laughter is a good treatment for anything. Laugh people laugh, its a miracle from God.
The day that we had to leave arrived, we were uneasy as we got used to going out at night every night and having sumptuous dinners and lunches, but all good things come to an end. I wish we had stayed longer, the only bad thing that could have happened is us putting on weight, but who really cares about that??
One thing I must say here is how Sawsan and I have the heat flush, so she walks in the room with her underwear only, and my sister in law Shaz braids her hear into four distinctive braids and wears her Rayban over them, which was the funniest thing that happened really. Till now when I remember that scene I laugh out loud.
