Saudi Arabia now has a national body for higher education that includes student experiences, courses, planning, assessment and evaluation. The Observatory on Higher Education was launched last Tuesday at an international exhibition on higher education in Riyadh. The observatory will review the current higher educational sector, collect, manage, analyse and publish information on the sector, [...]
Saudi Arabia now has a national body for higher education that includes student experiences, courses, planning, assessment and evaluation. The Observatory on Higher Education was launched last Tuesday at an international exhibition on higher education in Riyadh.
The observatory will review the current higher educational sector, collect, manage, analyse and publish information on the sector, as well as connect institutions with a national network for decision-making.
“This is a highly commendable idea that helps define Saudi Arabia as a learning society. I hope the services of the observatory will be extended to other countries in the region and beyond,” Calestous Juma, Director of the Science, Technology and Globalisation project at Harvard University in the US, told University World News.
Saudi Arabia has designated more than a quarter of its 2009 budget for education and training to emphasise the significance of investing in human resource development as the core of sustainable knowledge-based development.
“Saudi Arabia is beginning to take its place in the world science at both regional and international level through its rapid and substantial growth in the higher education sector,” Abdulkader Alfantookh, Deputy Minister of Higher Education, told University World News.
Based on many factors, including government spending, the Economist in 2008 placed Saudi Arabia in seventh place ahead of France, Russia, Italy, Spain, Malaysia and many other countries in the field of higher education.
Alfantookh said the Saudi government had also started instituting a series of initiatives for enhancing access to higher education for women.
Currently, more than 300 higher education institutes exist for women in Saudi Arabia alongside universities under the patronage of the Ministry of Education. Women represent more than 56% of Saudi university students and more than 20% of those benefiting from overseas scholarship programmes.
“These achievements have been reflected in international reports and statistics,” Alfantookh pointed out. (via universityworldnews.com)
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