DOHA: The rector of King Saud University (KSU) in Riyadh vowed on Tuesday to help make the Kingdom's universities among the best in the world.
Professor Abdullah bin Abdul-Rahman Al-Othman said education has changed so drastically that it is virtually unrecognizable from how it was taught in Saudi Arabia before the turn of the century. Al-Othman made the comments on the first day of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) in Doha, Qatar.
"There's absolutely nothing that links the 20th and 21st centuries in terms of education," he said. "This is why we must focus on reviving the education system."
He said the Kingdom had to transform itself from an economy based on a depleting source of wealth, oil, to one based on the infinite resource of knowledge.
"We are aware of the need for transition," he added. "And we will guarantee that transition under Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah."
There were only a handful of universities in the Kingdom as little as two decades ago. Now there are at least 33 universities teaching an estimated 1 million students, said Al-Othman. Between 10 to 20 percent of that figure study abroad under the King Abdullah Scholarship Program, he added.
"Today, knowledge is what separates us from poverty," he said. "Universities have to be autonomous on a financial level in order to be competitive." Al-Othman said the Kingdom's ultimate aim was to foster an entrepreneurial culture among its youth. "Ultimately, we want to produce a student that is creating jobs for their fellow graduates, not a student that is simply knocking on the door for a job," he said. "We should be recognized as an advanced country as we are, after all, in the G20. Similarly, King Saud University (KSU) should also be aiming for international recognition."
He said KSU was already sharing its teaching methods and philosophy of emphasizing on research and innovation with other Saudi universities. When asked whether he would also liaise with higher education institutions in the Middle East, he replied it was something he would consider for the future.
Al-Othman's speech was received well by the audience in a packed hall at the Sheraton Hotel in the Qatari capital. However, one Spanish delegate involved in the promotion of further education abroad remarked to Arab News that she was still waiting for the Kingdom to send some of its students to her country, despite Saudi officials promising they would.
The theme of the session, which also featured Dr. Patrick Awuah, founder of Ashesi University in Ghana, and Toby Salt, deputy chief executive of the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services in the UK, was centered on different leadership models and how important they are in developing education.
Al-Othman acknowledged there were strong challenges to tackle, including the huge gap students often have to overcome when making the transition from secondary to higher education.
"This is why we've implemented a program where students have to learn certain skills, such as English, mathematics and communication skills, before they can properly be enrolled to the university," he told Arab News when questioned on the issue.
He added that English is recognized as the global business language and this is definitely the case in the Kingdom. "We have American companies, British companies operating here so we have to adapt," he said, adding that Saudi universities have partnered with universities abroad. He said KSU's engineering faculty had twinned with the University of Bordeaux to achieve its aim of attaining international recognition.
The session on leadership models was only one of the highlights at WISE on a packed first day, which carried the overall theme on how to improve education standards throughout the world.
In the main plenary session, education leaders from countries facing real challenges in this important field told delegates how they overcame them.
Dr. Fasli Jalal, vice minister for national education in Indonesia, said his country's response to dropping standards and increasing absenteeism among teachers was to introduce a law for them focusing on upgrading their qualifications and welfare while ensuring quality assurance and mapping deployment and recruitment requirements.
He added that as a result of the law, introduced in 2005, absenteeism had dropped from 18 percent in 2002 to 15 percent in 2010. He also said Indonesia planned to spend more money on improving professional incentives for its teachers as part of its strategy to link salary to performance.
Professor Nigel Harris, vice-chancellor of the University of the West Indies, said dispersing education to so many nations that demand increased access to tertiary education was a huge challenge.
He said the West Indies' solution was to introduce a series of learning centers across the nations and also focus on developing a single virtual university space tailored to its adult learners, improving access through e-learning.
Harris claimed this model was effective for helping tertiary learning institutions in sub-regions with limited access to learning resources.
WISE, an initiative of the Qatar Foundation, aims to facilitate dialogue and collaboration among those heavily involved in education. This is the second such summit.
© Arab News 2010
