Inadequate Disciplines in Saudi Universities and its Effect to a Student’s Future

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Inadequate Disciplines in Saudi Universities and its Effect to a Student’s Future

Saudi Arabia is one of the many countries that imports education services through her students. The government of Saudi-Arabia believes that taking students to study at international leading universities is an important pillar that will underpin international workforce development for the kingdom (Meijer, 2010). Meijer, continues to explain that the country has a tendency of referring students to other higher learning institutions located outside their boundaries with the aim of assisting them to learn new disciplines that are not being offered in their universities. The mission of sending students abroad is to prepare them with adequate knowledge that will assist them to compete on the labor market at the international level and scientific research areas to become highly qualified individuals for the government, Saudi universities, and the private sector. 

Meijer (2010) explains that Saudi universities contain inadequate and few qualified personnel to teach students in different disciplines. This has led to introduction of King Abdullah Sponsorship Program (KASP) that gives full scholarship to Saudi Arabian students. The government of Saudi chooses the majors that a student should choose from and students make their individual selection. The Saudi government chooses the fields to ensure that all fields are widely distributed and none is oversaturated after students return to Saudi after their education. Scholarship programs have helped the Saudi Arabian students to achieve doctorate, masters’ and bachelors’ degrees as well as medical fellowship. These students would not have achieved this if they stayed in their country due to the unlimited personnel and technology in the country.

On the Monday 29 of September 2014 Alhayat magazine, a Dammam university student explained that attending a university called for several conditions where some students are rejected from an oversea university due to a scarcity of disciplines that are limited to information technology, health information, accounting, and ecommerce.  This limitation has discouraged students from enrolling to universities. Traditionally, Saudi Arabian male and female students studied from different schools, thereby, reducing competition between men and women in different field like information technology (Liton, 2013). Male students had their popular learning discipline mostly in technical fields and females had theirs too like health information. 

Most of the learning institutions have just concentrated on basic majors like history, geography, math, English, and general subjects. These fields limit students and they thus opt to enroll for overseas learning to countries where their desired disciplines are (Kassim, Bogari, & Zain, 2013). The lack of diversity in majors in the learning institutions offered an opportunity for men as compared to women bringing the issue of gender inequality. There is need for more diversity and disciplines in the Arabia Universities to ensure that the students remain and studies in their country. This will reduce the burden of King Abdullah Sponsorship Program (KASP and personal sponsored scholarships. 

For many years, Saudi Arabia has relied on administrative as the particular style but the country should stop depending fully on it. The population of Saudi Arabia continues to grow leading to overcrowding in universities and colleges. This calls for action both to the government and the private sector of coming up with more higher learning institutions. Alrashidi (2014) states that, the ministry of higher education in Saudi continues to encourage the use of information technology in learning and teaching among its faculties. According to Kassim, Bogari, & Zain, (2013). The biggest challenge in Saudi Arabia is the provision of college education to the rapid population growth of students leading to a limited capacity of college and universities compared to the rapid growth. In tackling this issue, the Ministry of Higher Education should endeavor in integrating traditional instructions with web-based instructions in universities (Alrashidi, 2014).

References

Alrashidi, A. (2014). E-learning in Saudi Arabia: A Review of the Literature. BJESBS, 4(5), 656-672. http://dx.doi.org/10.9734/bjesbs/2014/6997

Kassim, N., Bogari, N., & Zain, M. (2013). Service Quality of a Public University in Saudi Arabia. Journal Of E-Learning And Higher Education, 1-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.5171/2013.954273

Liton, H. A. (2013). EFL Teachers’ Perceptions, Evaluations and Expectations about English Language Courses as EFL in Saudi Universities. International Journal of Instruction, v6 n2 p19-34.

Meijer, R. (2010). Reform in Saudi Arabia: The Gender-Segregation Debate. Middle East Policy, 17(4), 80-100. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-4967.2010.00464.x