ABU DHABI: A local English newspaper has said that education has been at the heart of the national project since the UAE was founded in 1971.
In an editorial on Tuesday, The National said, “Education in the years shortly before and after the union was not all that it could have been, given that the nation had just begun its national development. According to official figures, in 1975, the rate of adult literacy was 58 percent among men and 38 percent among women. Today, however, literacy rates for Emiratis of both genders are close to 95 percent.
“Providing land and funds for new schools that would cater for the children of the many foreign workers who came to the Emirates and contributed to its success was also a priority for the country’s leadership.”
Elementary schooling was just the beginning of the story. In the space of two generations, the country has transitioned from having an informal, didactic education model to one where world-class universities such as the Sorbonne and New York University have
set up campuses here.
Accomplished and experienced academics abound in the country’s higher education system, and pioneering institutions, such as the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), continue to break new ground. This, and the fact that more accredited degree programmes are on offer here than ever, makes this week’s news that fewer young Emirati are choosing to travel to the US for their studies understandable.
The UAE’s development of a competitive education system that is geared towards the needs of the 21st century is an ongoing process that has relied as much on partnership – that is, getting the best from foreign universities and academics – as it has on the country’s long term planning and abundant resources. This has led to some fruitful collaborations with locally based researchers that have also helped the Emirates develop further and reflect critically on its own trajectory.
To take on example, in February The National reported on a two-year collaboration between
researchers at Abu Dhabi University and the London School of Economics that examined transport in the capital and changes that could help to make the city more connected.
The years of investment, partnership and strategic thought that have gone into higher education in the UAE are paying off. In September last year, Abu Dhabi University became the first in the UAE to be ranked in global top 250 by Times Higher Education, and six universities in the Emirates have been included in the World University Rankings for this year.
It is not just the world of academia that is recognising these accomplishments; young people in the Middle East do, too. According to the Arab Youth Survey 2023, nearly a quarter of young Arabs surveyed across the 18 states said that the UAE was the country they most wanted to live in. When added to the UAE’s reputation for stability and safety, it is not surprising that more young people – Emirati and foreign alike – are choosing the country as a place to study.
There is still some way
to go before UAE institutions are competing on an equal footing with the likes of the centuries-old colleges. But Emirati universities are going in the right direction and continue to attract top global talent; yesterday it was announced that Prof Timothy Baldwin, a distinguished figure in the field of natural language processing, has been appointed as provost of MBZUAI.
“Offering an attractive and accessible world-class education will be vital for the country to succeed in the 21st century and beyond, as the UAE Founding Father Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan had initially envisioned,” concluded the Abu Dhabi-based daily.
Source: Emirates News Agency
