Bridging the Learning Gulf

What’s the single biggest issue which year-on-year preoccupies the governments of the Gulf states? The price of oil? Political stability and the rise of radical Islamism? Economic stability and the impact on the Middle East of the global downturn?

None of these, I would argue. The oil price obviously affects the current account balances of the Gulf’s economies, yet most of the oil-rich states have built up large sovereign funds which they are not afraid to draw upon when oil revenue cannot sustain development budgets.

Despite being inside a political ring of fire, with chaos and uncertainty threatening in Iran, Palestine, Iraq, Somalia and (most notably at the moment) the Yemen, the governments of the Gulf Cooperation Council have succeeded in maintaining a remarkable level of stability within their own borders despite the turbulence without.

For all the furore over the near-default of Dubai World and the negative fallout from the collapse of the Saad Group in Saudi Arabia (which left a number of Middle East banks nursing serious losses), the economies of the Gulf have pulled through the global downturn with varying levels of success. Even in Dubai, the sums of money involved in the Dubai World affair were out of all proportion to the international attention it received. A case of I-told-you-so? That’s a question best answered in five years time. My bet is on Dubai recovering and going from strength to strength.

So what’s the issue which, as political and economic crises come and go, has consistently preoccupied the leaders of the GCC over the past 30 years?

In my opinion, it’s education.

Ask any minister or business leader in any of the GCC countries about education, and you will hear the same sentiments: “it is critically important that we provide our youth with an education that enables them to take a productive place in the economy, that enables our country to decrease its reliance on foreign expertise, and enables us to build a knowledge-based society”.

Many billions of dollars have been invested across the region in schools, universities and foreign education. Likewise in occupational training and leadership development, drawing on the expertise of the best-known consultancies and academic institutions from around the world (often misguidedly in my opinion, but that’s another story).

With populations growing rapidly in countries like Saudi Arabia, the challenge is not just to move forward, but to keep up. As a Saudi government official told me last year: “in the time takes for us to finish this meeting, we will need another primary school”.

Different countries have adopted different strategies. Saudi Arabia has poured money into its own universities and schools, while sending many thousands to overseas universities through the King Abdullah Scholarship fund. The Emirates have encouraged many foreign universities to establish campuses in Dubai, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. In Bahrain the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship Program takes the brightest ten students of each year and funds them for two years in a UK or US boarding school, an undergraduate education in those countries, followed, if they wish, by postgraduate education. Not only that, but the Program give the students the opportunity to carry out summer projects with one of the country’s leading employers.

Flagship projects such as the Crown Prince’s Program and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the magnificent new research campus north of Jeddah, regularly hit the headlines and impress with their excellence and imagination.

But beneath the jewels, problems remain. In Saudi Arabia, the GCC’s largest economy, a primary and secondary education system that leaves students underprepared for the workplace is undergoing urgent reform, but reforming the schools system takes time. Meanwhile thousands of school graduates enter the job market unprepared for any but the most basic jobs, if such jobs can be found. An underperforming educational system gives rise to an even greater problem, high unemployment, especially in an economy that is accustomed to importing its expertise.

Cultural antipathy towards what people see as menial work also plays a part – there is across the Gulf a perception that the optimal career path is towards management, or into high-profile expert roles such as lawyer, doctor or engineer. Sadly, as is the case in many Western countries, teachers, especially those working in primary and secondary education, often do not get the respect they deserve.

There is a tendency as well to believe that the most important objective of training and education is to acquire the qualification, which is seen as a passport to personal advancement rather than the foundation for personal expertise. I know of one large organization which automatically promotes its employees to senior management roles once they gain a PhD, even if that qualification has nothing to do with management. So cultural attitudes toward education hamper progress, as do the attitudes of consultancies who seek to sell training and leadership solutions designed in the West with little empathy for the culture within which they seek to implement them.

For as long as the dangerous anomaly exists wherein the local employed population is outnumbered by foreign workers, yet national unemployment remains high, education will remain at the top of government agendas in the Middle East. And foreigners who play their part in educating the citizens of their host countries, whether they are teachers, managers, technical experts or mentors, will be valued and often cherished for years to come.

As the inspirational Saudi leader for whom I worked in the 80’s put it: “those of you who work hardest to make your presence here unnecessary will be the ones who will be here for the longest time”.

Steve Royston – January 2010