Higher Education in Developing and Arab Countries

Arab countries, following the higher education policy debate around the world, apparently adopted an instrumental human capital principle for educational development. This decision was not simply an outcome of independent government initiative by many Arab countries, but was influenced by informed educational policy advice by international agencies driving the human capital principles.

An example of these observations is the World Bank/UNESCO Task Force on Higher Education and Society Report (2000), Higher Education in Developing Countries: Peril and Promise, which observed that higher education systems in the developing countries are under-funded with under-qualified faculty, poorly taught students, and under- developed curricula. This report urges developing nations to provide higher education graduates with specialised skills, together with a general education to provide flexibility and foster innovation, concentrating on know-how learning. The Task Force concluded that, without improved human capital, countries will inevitably fall behind and experience intellectual and economic marginalization and isolation (ibid. p.18).

A second World Bank report (2002a) Constructing Knowledge Societies: New Challenges for Tertiary Education, considers that higher education institutions in the more developed nations will find difficulty in adapting and improving the quality of their

teaching, and in moving from traditional to lifelong learning. This shift in policy, according to the report, allows countries to implement new strategies to make higher education systems and outcomes adaptive to new norms of the market-driven economy, leading to benefits for human and social development. Considering human capital as a

Learning in The Global Knowledge Economy: Challenges for Developing Countries, continues with this theme, presenting a conceptual framework for developing states to move from inadequate, rigid, and traditional education and training systems by taking effective lifelong learning approaches. As noted above, this new learning approach combines human and social capital principles as it is characterised by being learner- centred, knowledge-rich, and assessment-driven and connected to community values. The World Bank recommends that less developed states promote economic and social

development by embarking on strategies of creating, acquiring and transmitting

knowledge. To this end, the ability of the population to communicate using the English language has been recognised as a core skill in a country’s approach to sustaining growth.

A seminal work, the United Nations Development Program’s Arab Human Development Report (2003), Building a Knowledge Society, critically comments on the status of education in the Arab world, specifically higher education. This report makes clear the challenge Arab nations face in acquiring knowledge, describing Arabs as passive consumers rather than providers of knowledge. The quality of their education systems is the most serious problem faced by Arab countries, and the authors reported that the curricula of the Arab nations’ higher education institutions lacked critical thinking, were dependent on memorising as a learning tool, lacked provision for foreign languages and had inadequate certification processes. Further, higher education systems in Arab nations lack autonomy, focus on quantity rather than quality of outcomes and had poorly

developed enrolment procedures. The emphasis in the report is on educational institutions as builders of the nation’s human capital.

In a reference relevant to the research in this thesis, The Arab Human Development Report gives a clear indication that mass media in the Arab world lacks independence and criticises its lack of involvement in national development. As the local media does not produce or transform knowledge, it adversely affects Arab citizens in their ability to acquire and use information. The report called for a parallel use of Arabic and foreign languages in education to develop knowledge societies. In effect, Arab countries lack sufficient implementation of human and social capital applied principles.

Research reported in human resource and economic development literature relating to higher education, training and graduate employment in Arab countries is not

encouraging. In a comprehensive review, Fergany (2000) finds, compared to the more developed countries, a deteriorating state of university education in the Arab world.

Referring to the importance of higher education in building knowledge-based societies, Fergany believes that higher education plays a vital role not only in building human capital but also in gaining high levels of societal returns in a nation’s development process. The researcher characterised higher education in the Arab world as substantially falling short in levels of enrolment in higher education by Arab youth, especially females; having a poor quality of education; and investing relatively low levels of expenditure on higher

education. Accordingly, Fergany recommended that Arab countries liberate their higher education systems, upgrade the quality of education to embrace lifelong and work-related learning principles and create a cooperative environment for their universities.

Ali (2002) contributes to the debate, stating that Arab countries continue to

experience challenges in the development of their higher education systems, although they have well-regarded levels of achievement in education and thus their accumulation of human capital. However, the researcher questions the quality of training, finding, for example, Arab graduates who have not yet mastered technology. From a human capital perspective Ali argues that education in the Arab world lacks quality output and produces a low rate of return from the investment that is made in education, demonstrated by the high rates of unemployment among university graduates. Similarly Doraid, (2000 p.16)

commented:

Bad policies have distorted the output of the educational systems to become grossly out of tune with the requirements of the labour market. This contributed to the high rate of unemployment among the educated in the region – a reflection of the mismatch between excess supply from tertiary education and the demands of the economy.

Doraid continues that policies in the Arab States should aim at creating a virtuous cycle of growth sustaining human development, and human development sustaining economic growth (ibid. p.28).

Studies of education and training systems in the GCC countries show deficiencies resulting in graduate unemployment continue to present great challenges to their

governments. In 2001, the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) warned:

The quality of regional education systems is declining as a result of inadequate investment, which is not commensurate with demand and is unable to meet new requirements. This situation, combined with the lack of appropriate training programmes, has increased unemployment among young graduates.

The challenge facing the developing countries is to reform their higher education systems to be culturally appropriate, economically sensible, operationally manageable, and strategically effective in the information society era (Chapman & Austin 2002). In

addressing the challenges for less-developed countries, Salmi (2002) identifies interrelated factors impacting the development of higher education systems, that is, competing in a global economy, using technical and socioeconomic knowledge as drivers of change and growth and taking advantage of the information and communication revolution. Means to approach these challenges include adapting training to meet commercial requirements.

Kubursi (1999 p.49) states that the Arab challenge is about sustaining human development in an increasingly globalized and mean world. The researcher argues that the future for Arab economies will depend on their preparation to benefit, in a human capital sense, from the opportunities offered by the information and digital economy and identifies structural issues that hamper their ability to adapt to global change. For Kubursi, the Arab economies have an under-investment in training and the education attainments of Arab labor do not prepare (the particular country) for international competition. The author refers to inefficient bureaucracies, proposing that Arab countries adopt:

• substantial reduction of numbers of under-performing public sector employees • institution-building by implementing effective policies and practices

• raise skills levels

• increase domestic technological capabilities.

To substantially increase investment in human capital, Kubursi recommends governments should invest in people, training, information and knowledge; decrease the separation between the public and private sectors; emphasise the transparency of good governance by implementing policies and practices of efficiency, merit, expertise, accountability, service, objectivity and integrity by restructuring public institutions; and building the required infrastructure in all its aspects (Kubursi 1999 p.42-5). Arab universities, as a coordinated group, provide the means to drive the renewal process through government, commerce and social institutions (ibid. p.46). Here, in essence, is the main justification for this research and for the significance of the research statement to the enhancement of Oman’s mass communication graduates’ employment opportunities.

Confirming that education and human capital are the main determinants of growth in the knowledge-based economy, Boyer and Atallah (2000 p.2) state:

In a society characterised by the globalisation of markets and the internationalisation of cultures, each country must realise that the best way to compete and benefit from the world growth opportunities is to be credibly aware of the importance of developing its capital stock.

To provide a consensus between demand and supply of valuable skills, the authors propose:

To achieve a high level of efficiency in raising the level of human capital in society, both in quantity and quality, a new set of interaction rules between universities and industries must be designed and implemented. These will represent a major shift of emphasis in both universities and firms: they must become partners, linked by implicit and explicit contractual arrangements, in a redesigned new human capital formation industry (ibid p.6).

The authors argue that the mission of universities is both educational and vocational and that governments should do more to improve teaching quality and that teaching should meet labour market needs (ibid p.28).

It is clear that human capital theory informs educational development in the Arab world and in Oman in particular. Just as apparent is the observation that the poor

employment outcomes for graduates from Arab universities also affect Oman. The almost exclusive focus on human capital in education policy development in the Arab countries points to the primary issue they confront with the paradigm, especially in relation to higher education. The issue, which is the starting point for this research, arguably is linked to the adoption of what the Arab countries expect to be universally applicable policy

formulations. However, the authorities lack the recognition that national characteristics and cultural commitments and practices are also important in the realisation of policy goals. Therefore, this thesis addresses the research statement through application of a theoretical framework comprising human capital and social capital dimensions.

In Arab countries, the community cohesion characteristic producing high levels of bonding social capital, even containing the vertical social linkages and strong bridging characteristics, cannot be assumed sufficiently robust to support the mixed results of their human capital policies and provide the economic growth they seek.

2.4 Summary

This first chapter of the literature review surveys the research relevant to the

employability of graduates from universities in countries relevant to the Omani experience. By reference to research and theoretical frameworks applied in developed countries, notably human capital and associated concepts and practices - lifelong learning, work- based learning, skills and knowledge development, and building a flexible workforce – the review establishes that a purely economic basis for graduate employability is not a

convincing stand-alone proposition. Human capital strategies may be only one side of the foundation for a successful economy and for a university seeking to contribute strongly to the nation by graduating employable professionals able to advance the interests of both the nation’s economy and its communities. As Woolcock (2001, p. 15) argues, the broader social message rippling through the social capital literature is that how we associate with each other has enormous implications for our well-being, whether we live in rich or poor countries.

In the following chapter, the human capital/social capital framework is applied to the higher education sector in Oman, with a specific focus on the mass communication program at Sultan Qaboos University. The mass communication field appears an area of the economy, Nayaran (1999 p.21) notes, that may be an indicator for the extent to which a community is characterised by the kinds of ties associated with high levels of social