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Stress on general education to take on new challenges

Abu Dhabi — Population growth and economic development are contributing to an increasing number of students enrolling in higher education worldwide, a number forecasted to more than double by 2025, when 262 million students are expected to fill up university classrooms.

Yet, developing countries, experiencing increasing demand for higher education, will not be able to accommodate all its students in the near future. According to estimates, some eight million students will have to travel abroad by 2025, to study, nearly three times more than today.

Several dozens UAE and GCC university professors who gathered in Abu Dhabi on March 28-29, claim that such a situation will pose new challenges to the already challenged and debated general education.

“General education is significant. General education constitutes 25 per cent of our degrees and, to be blunt, it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves,” said Dr Richard Gibb, provost of Abu Dhabi University (ADU).

To discuss today’s challenges of general education, ADU organised a conference on Reforms in General Education this March 28-29, a topic brought forward for the first time in a conference in the Arab Gulf.

“An effective general education provides the foundation to everything we do,” stressed Dr. Gibb.

“What today’s students get from general education is critical thinking skills. (...) It will allow them to excel as people, not only as scientists, engineers or doctors,” he added.

General education is a college programme intended to develop students as personalities rather than trained specialists and to transmit a common cultural heritage.

Cultural and religious conflicts, studying or working abroad, in a multinational environment are some of the factors that make general education more important than ever.

“For the first time in history, one per cent of the world’s population has more wealth than the rest of the 99 per cent,” stressed Rubina Qureshi, professor at ADU.

Apart from economic and social imbalance, this is also creating a cultural distortion in today’s youth.

“Our students are facing fading cultural values,” she pointed out.

Therefore, Qureshi urged university professors in UAE and all over the Gulf to raise the status and standards of general education.

silvia@khaleejtimes.com