Gulf Countries: Student Destinations and

Expectations when Studying Overseas

ICEF Dubai 2020

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Session description:

• Statistics

• Male and female numbers

• Which countries are on the students’ mind

• Level of study

• What is the nationality of the students

• What are the chosen majors

• How to register a university on the list (most Gulf countries have a form online to do this)

• Foundation programmes and why they are required

• What skills students are looking for

• Change of culture and culture shock.

• How do we attract students? (Social Media? University visits?)

• General observations

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Student statistics

• Based on enquires of the last 5 years:

• Gender

• Country of Interest

• Level of Study

• Nationalities

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Students’ gender

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female 47%

male53%

Country of interest

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uk67%

NZ + Australia 3%

Canada4%

Europe8%

Germany4%

GCC 3%

Ireland2%

Undecided9%

LEVEL OF STUDY

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Bachelors 83%

POSTGRADUATE12%

SHORT COURSES5%

Nationalities

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Bahraini 31%

Other Arabic Nationalities 7%

British + Canadian + USA 3%

Bangladish+Indian+Pakistani+Srilankan

6%

KSA27%

OTHER GCC Nationalaties 10%

UAE16%

List of majors

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Accounts & Finance15%

Criminology 7%

Medicine 6%

Education Field 3%

Sciences6%

Business and Management 15%

Banking and Finance13%Aviation 2%

International Relations 1%

Law2%

Psychology 1%

Fashion Design 2%

Entrepreneurship 1%

Dentistry1%

Language 1%

Multimedia 2%

IT2%

Fintech 5%

Engineering field8%

Politics 0%

Dental0%

Cyber Security 2%Culinary

2%

Nutrition 1%

Veteinary1%

Global Health 1%

Arts 1%

MAJORS

How to register a university to the list

• As you know most Gulf countries have an approved lists of universities

• The approved list is different to the scholarship list

• Sometimes they use QS, times higher or Shanghi Jiatong

• Universities that are not on the list are required to include itself on it, either by filling a form and submitting documentations or by visiting the embassies in their respective counties.

• Link By country:

• UAE

• Oman

• Bahrain

• Kuwait

• Saudi

• Qatar:

• List of approved universitieshttp://www.edu.gov.qa/Ar/structure/HigherEducation/HigherEducationInstitute/Offices/Documents/HEI_Uni_2015.pdf

• Lists of universities for Hamad Bin Khalifa and Tamim Bin Hamad scholarshipshttp://www.edu.gov.qa/Ar/structure/HigherEducation/HigherEducationInstitute/Offices/Documents/1-Hamad_Tamim.pdf

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Foundation programmes and why they are required

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AS YOU KNOW SCHOOLING IN THE GULF

ARE 12 YEARS (6 PRIMARY, 3

INTERMEDIATE AND 3 SECONDARY)

PROGRAMMES IN PUBLIC SCHOOLS IS IN ARABIC

WITH ENGLISH TAUGHT AS A SUBJECT.

PROGRAMME IN PRIVATE SCHOOLS IS IN

ENGLISH WITH VERY FEW PROVIDING IB OR A

LEVELS. MOST OF THE SCHOOLS PROVIDE AN

AMERICAN PROGRAMME

THUS MAJORITY OF THE STUDENTS ARE

REQUIRED TO DO AN ENGLISH PROGRAMME(MOSTLY PAY FOR THIS VIA OWN FUNDING) AS

WELL AS A FOUNDATION PROGRAMME (PAID FOR BY THE GOVERNMENT IF

THE STUDENTS HAD SECURED A

SCHOLARSHIP) OR PAID FOR BY THE STUDENTS’

THEMSELVES

MOST UNIVERSITIES THAT ARE ON THE LIST

EITHER PROVIDE FOUNDATION OR USE A PARTNER TO PROVIDE

THE FOUNDATION PROGRAMME.

MOST PARTNERS ARE APPROVED

What skills students are looking for?

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Most schools are stressing the 21st ccentury skills, STEM are now taken care of in most curriculums

Communication skills, collaboration skills, public speaking are on the rise, with MUN and TEDex are used by schools arounf the gulf

Government initiatives to improve the students’ skills are being adopted such as Aseel in Bahrain, or the young merchant in UAE

Students are continuously becoming smarter in choosing their majors to fit their potential such as doing a psychometic test.

We are also instilling the importance of choosing the right major for future careers

Change of culture and culture shock- 1

• Poetically speaking there should not be any culture shock in today’s students

• Most students had either visited the countries they generally want to go to or their parents had studied there

• Most of the gulf countries have people from the whole world living in them (90% of UAE population are foreigners)

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Change of culture and culture shock- 2

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Having said that, students are not used to do anything for themselves, mostly spoiled by their parents and maids, thus the culture shock

We prep them to understand that living alone is as important as studying abroad, the skills they will gain will help them for the rest of their lives

We also source universities that foster great student living environment

We started to choose accomodation that provide a great overseas living experience.

Question of the century: How do we attract students? (Social Media? University visits?)

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If Social Media, then, Which one? We have a lot of social media channels, and most of them are being under tremendous pressure. Personally, I still feel face-to face is the best method, also whatsapp is gaining momentum.

University visits: I like this method and I think its important to do

Career fairs, these are becoming a business and most schools charge for them

Education exhibitions, these are old school, and I am not sure why we go to them and pay so much. Students are pressed to visit by their schools or by their parents, they are not interested anymore

Word of mouth: I prefer this if compared to all the above.

General observations

In the next few slides I am going to speak about the future of education as I see it.

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Trends

1

Education is a market

2

International student mobility is on the increase and students continue to choose different countries each year

3

Increased number of universities and language schools in the world

4

New countries are introduced so we are not only speaking about countries like UK, Australia and New Zealand, Canada, USA and Europe

5

New Jobs are being created and some are going , see the link from the university of Oxford.

Trivia

• Which country has more enrollments

• Which job will disappear when AI becomes a norm? A doctor or a nurse?

• What are the 21st century skills (OECD) and who is teaching them?

SEE NEXT SLIDES

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Answers

countries with high

enrolments

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Answers –Doctors will lose their jobs to AI but not nurses

• Indications of sickness can be traced by machinery and AI

• But we need someone to give injections, treat a wound and bandage it etc

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Teaching: Medicine

What do most doctors do after the finish their studies and learn the work? Start a clinic

How many doctors do you know is able to do both run the clinic and treat patients?

Are doctors taught business skills?

There is a need to add a core to the medical programme to teach them communication skills, business 101, accounting 101, and management skills

21st century skills

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Effect of growth in education market-1

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However, there is change in the air

New advancements and new technologies are happening at a high speed

Education related products are also being discovered at a blink (new technologies, new styles of accommodation, and much more

Jobs are changing, some are disappearing, and some are created from old jobs

Give me examples?

Effect of growth in education market-2

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DUE TO THESE REASONS WE MUST TRY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE

CURRICULUM THAT WE TEACH

WE NEED TO BE THINKING AHEAD RATHER THAN BEING STATIC

FEW EXAMPLES WILL FOLLOW IN THE NEXT SLIDES:

Teaching -Business

Create incubation centres in all business schools and each

student must learn to create a business, run it and be able to actually adapt it to what the

WORLD really needs

Add effect/knowledge/adaptability

of social media to the curriculum

Add Psychology to the programme, after all we are dealing with people and we

need to know them very well

Add communication skills and forecasting skills to the major

Ability to look at the accounts and know if the business is

doing well or not, ability to see trends, comparisons and is it a

going concern

Add Technology and AI to the curriculum

Teaching Banking

• Don’t we need to teach them technology too?

• Wouldn't those students need to know what to create for the future to make our banking life easier for 2050?

• How are we teaching now?

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Teaching: Sustainability

Sustainability is a major by it self. Its isolated, and sometimes added to

renewable energy programme.

Whilst its ok to do that, however we must add sustainability to every major

as the effects of doing anything can make a difference between long term

and short term benefits/disadvantages

EG, trend is to use recyclable items (bottles) in making cloths, has anyone

discussed what happens to the residues when we wash those cloths?

Maybe they will kill the ocean life? Thus even in Fashion design we need

to teach sustainability

Teaching –Education (integrated learning)

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Ability to link between various subjects

Teach as a theme instead of by subject such as physics, chemistry or mathematics.

Architecture and sustainability

Writing examples such as this

The business of schools

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Well, the change should not only happen to universities it should also happen to schools

The students are our responsibility and we need to make sure that they are versatile to live in the 21st century and have the skills needed to make the world a better place

Ask the students what they want

Add new technologies in teaching

Use the flipped classrooms

Abolish the classroom, which is even better.

The Education System of (Deficiencies)

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Students finish schools lacking appropriate foreign language proficiency

In most countries the subjects in the education system are taught in isolation (maybe we can remove Finland from this generalisations)

The learners need to know that they are going to grew up needing some general skills that will make them survive

I like the idea of the Big OE, or TY or gap year (some countries have them) as they could provide the students with the skills necessary to live a better life

How many of us have spent their lives doing the wrong job? We must blame the schools

AI and Robots? Are they taking over?The great minds speak:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTbrk0suwbg

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InfoTech and BioTech

• There must be a link between teaching both subjects

• This is important if we need to have the futuristic products

• It seems that our emotions are chemical reactions that can be tracked by technology and hence new curriculum is needed for that.

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Thank You

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