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None of the momentous challenges Arab universities face is unique either in kind or degree. Other societies exhibit some of the same pathologies-insufficient resources, high drop-out rates, feeble contributions to research and development, inappropriate skill formation for existing job markets, weak research incentive structures, weak institutional autonomy, and co-optation into the political order. But, it may be that the concentration of these pathologies and their depth is what sets the Arab world apart.0Missions Impossible seeks to explain the process of policymaking in higher education in the Arab world, a process that is shaped by the region's politics of autocratic rule. Higher education in the Arab world is directly linked to crises in economic growth, social inequality and, as a result, regime survival. If unsuccessful, higher education could be the catalyst to regime collapse. If successful, it could be the catalyst to sustained growth and innovation-but that, too, could unleash forces that the region's autocrats are unable to control. Leaders are risk-averse and therefore implement policies that tame the universities politically but in the process sap their capabilities for innovation and knowledge creation.

We analyzed determinants of women's employment with data for 40,792 women living in 103 districts of Arab countries. We tested a new theoretical framework that addresses the roles of needs, opportunities, and values at multiple levels. At the microlevel (individual, family), socioeconomic factors, care duties, and traditionalism were important; at the macrolevel (district), economic development and societal norms were important. Women's education seemed most influential. Interaction analyses showed that returns on women's education depended on their partner's education and on the economic development, labor market structure, urbanization, and strength of traditional norms in the district in which women live. Our results stress the importance of a comprehensive approach toward women's employment in these countries.

\"Presenting an analysis of higher education in eight countries in the Arab Middle East and North Africa, Degrees of Dignity works to dismantle narratives of crisis and assert approaches to institutional reform. Drawing on policy documents, media narratives, interviews, and personal experiences, Elizabeth Buckner explores how apolitical external reform models become contested and modified by local actors in ways that are simultaneously complicated, surprising, and even inspiring. Degrees of Dignity documents how the global discourses of neoliberalism have legitimized specific policy models for higher education reform in the Arab world, including quality assurance, privatization, and internationalization. Through a multi-level and comparative analysis, this book examines how policy models are implemented, with often complex results, in countries throughout the region. Ultimately, Degrees of Dignity calls on the field of higher education development to rethink current approaches to higher education reform: rather than viewing the Arab world as a site for intervention, it argues that the Arab world can act as a source for insight on resilient higher education systems.\"-- Provided by publisher.

This study provides an in-depth assessment of the cultural challenges eLearners from the Gulf Corporation Council (GCC) countries face when enrolled in Western higher education institutions. The study adopts an analytical approach by identifying two themes that incorporate reviewing some of the most significant literature related to this area of study. As theoretical frameworks, Hofstede’s popular cultural dimensions and Hall’s (1976) concept of low and high context cultures are considered. The purpose of this thematic review of the literature is to better understand challenges related to eLearning that eLearners from the GCC countries face when enrolled in Western educational institutions. In view of that, this study sheds light on two main questions: What are some of the challenges eLearners from the GCC countries face when enrolled in Western educational institutions? And what considerations should be taken into account when designing instructional materials for online courses targeting eLearners from the GCC Countries? The analysis revealed that GCC students face different types of eLearning barriers that are divided into two broad categories. The first is the general barriers and inconveniences, and the second is the challenges they face when enrolled in Western universities. This study also concluded that Western universities targeting students from the Arab countries in general, and the GCC countries in particular, need to place suitable inter-cultural plans to prepare for and effectively deal with the challenges analysed in the study. Recommendations on how to implement these preparatory plans for the GCC eLearners enrolled in Western programmes are also presented and highlighted.

This article contributes to the emerging theoretical construct of what has been called 'transnational academic capitalism', characterised by the blurring of traditional boundaries between public, private, local, regional and international, and between market-driven and critically transformative higher education visions. Here we examine how these issues are reflected in higher education policy in the Arab Gulf, asking: what kinds of capital are being constructed and traded? By and for whom? What is the relationship between higher education competition, governance and the public good? We find contradictory trends, which we see as strategic ambivalence pointing to country-specific readings of similar regional markets and attempts to hedge bets between rival forms of apparent capital. The exploration offers a counterpoint to more widely cited examples, hereby helping to shape new paradigmatic 'glocalised' understandings of this field.

This paper maps the landscape of transnational higher education in the Middle East, focusing in particular on the recent expansion of satellite, branch, and offshore educational institutions and programs that foreign institutions have set up in the region. Of the estimated 100 branch campuses currently operating worldwide, over one-third are in the Arab region and the majority have opened within the last decade; two dozen additional transnational programs and universities exist in the region as well. Very little research has been conducted on these new institutions, however, raising many questions for scholars in education. This paper traces reasons for the rapid growth of the transnational higher education model in the Arab states and discusses the explanatory power for this phenomenon of the two major prevailing theories in comparative and international education. We argue that neither neoinstitutional theories about global norm diffusion nor culturalist theories about the local politics of educational borrowing and transfer sufficiently explain this phenomenon, and call instead for a regional approach. We also raise questions for further inquiry.

This article explores the linguistic tension resulting from the English-medium instruction policy at a state university in the UAE. The article is informed by a critical theoretical approach that views language policy from the vantage point of both Arabic and English. It argues that, contrary to the stated national and institutional goals, the current language policy and its implementation are depleting the linguistic capital of the nation. Data drawn from multiple sources show that English-medium instruction is incompatible with the students’ low levels of proficiency in English; that the implementation of the institution’s bilingual policy is geared towards the development of English only; and that a monolingual conceptualisation underpins institutional practices, thus contributing to Arabic language loss in the education domain. The article proposes that higher education in the country be linguistically diversified in order to achieve the goals of higher education and to protect the linguistic rights of local citizens.

Today, academics are more transient, working outside their home countries, than at any other time in the history of academics especially in the Arab World were there is great demand for faculty members educated in Western' culture and academia. However, many of these professors face considerable social, professional and academic challenges in teaching and research. This paper presents the voices of twenty expatriate professors (EPs) as they describe their experiences and conflicts they face teaching in GCC universities and how this impacts their identities as professors. Various identities and strategies that EPs use in their daily work and lives are described and discussed.(HRK / Abstract übernommen).

Trajectories of Education in the Arab World gives a broad yet detailed historical and geographical overview of education in Arab countries. Drawing on pre-modern and modern educational concepts, systems, and practices in the Arab world, this book examines the impact of Western cultural influence, the opportunities for reform and the sustainability of current initiatives. The contributors bring together analyses and case studies of educational standards and structures in the Arab world, from the classical Islamic period to contemporary local and international efforts to re-define the changing needs and purposes of Arab education in the contexts of modernization, multiculturalism, and globalization. Taking a thematic and chronological approach, the first section contrasts the traditional notions, approaches, and standards of education with the changes that were initiated or imposed by European influences in the nineteenth century. The chapters then focus on the role of modern state-based educational systems in constructing and preserving national identities, cultures, and citizenries and concentrates on the role of education in state-formation and the reproduction of socio-political hierarchies. The success of educational reforms and policy-making is then assessed, offering perspectives on future trends and prospects for generating institutional and organizational change. This book will be of interest to graduate and postgraduate students and scholars of education, history, Arab and Islamic history and the Middle East and North Africa. Osama Abi-Mershed is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University, where he currently teaches classes on the medieval and modern histories of the Middle East, North Africa and the Western Mediterranean world. His current research focuses on the processes of cultural transformation in colonial Algeria. Introduction: The Politics of Arab Educational Reforms Osama Abi-Mershed Part I: Historical Perspectives 1. The Principles of Instruction are the Grounds of Our Knowledge: Al-Farabi’s Philosophical and al-Ghazali’s spiritual approaches to learning Sebastian Günther 2. Between the Golden Age and the Renaissance: Islamic Higher Education in Eighteenth-Century Damascus Stephen Tamari 3. \"If the Devil Taught French\": Strategies of Language and Learning in French Mandate Beirut Nadya Sbaiti 4. \"According to a Logic Befitting the Arab Soul\": Cultural Policy and Popular Education in Morocco Since 1912 Spencer Segalla Part II: Education and the Post-Colonial State 5. Public Institutions of Religious Education in Egypt and Tunisia: Contrasting the Post-Colonial Reforms of Al-Azhar and the Zaytuna Malika Zeghal 6. Palestinian Education in a Virtual State Nubar Hovsepian 7. Language-in-Education Policies in Contemporary Lebanon: Youth Perspective Zeena Zakharia 8. Education as a Humanitarian Response as Applied to the Arab World, With Special Reference to the Palestinian Case Colin Brock and Lala Demirdjian Part III: Education and Socio-Political Development: Reform, Policy and Practice 9. Naming the Imaginary:”Building an Arab Knowledge Society” and the Contested Terrain of educational Reforms for development Andre Elias Mazawi 10. An Introduction to Qatar’s Primary and Secondary Education Reform Dominic Brewer 11. Observations from the Edge of the deluge: Are we going too far too fast in our Educational Transformation in the Arab World? Munir Bashshur

Through ethnographic examples of students' engagement with American universities in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, I argue that branch campuses have a particularly important relationship with emerging forms of racial consciousness, identity, and politicization among students, both citizen and foreign resident. This entry point is one that deliberately foregrounds the parochialism of an American perspective on the future of the academy as part of a broader project of postcolonial and transnational engagement with this new knowledge economy.