1. QUALITY ASSURANCE IN HIGHER
EDUCATION IN ARAB REGION
Paper Presented to the OECD/IMHE General Conference
1
Attaining and Sustaining Mass Higher Education,
17-19 September 2012, Paris, France.
K. El Hassan, PhD.
American University of Beirut.

2. OUTLINE
 Introduction
 Higher Education in Arab Region
 Achievements of a Decade of Higher Education
 Attempts at Quality Assurance in Arab States
• Inter-Arab systems
• International donors
 Higher Education Challenges in Arab Region:
• Educational Opportunity
• Quality of Education
 Recommendations
2

3. INTRODUCTION
 Quality assurance refers to review procedures undertaken
by higher education institutions that are designed to
• safeguard academic standards, and
• promote learning opportunities of acceptable quality for students.
 Arab region has witnessed great expansion in higher
education in last decade in number of institutions and
enrollment rates due to
• the demographic reality of a larger youth population, often
referred to as the 'youth bulge
• rise in social demand for higher education, and
• the reform initiatives and explicit policy changes undertaken by
governments
3

4. HIGHER EDUCATION IN ARAB REGION
 All Arab states underwent reform of their higher education
systems, yet they pursued distinct models of reforms with different
implications for the role of the state.
 Most of the countries in the region worked on
o improving access and quality
o emphasizing the importance of establishing a knowledge economy and
increasing global competitiveness.
 The higher education system most commonly applied is that of
public education with a tendency for an increase in number of
privately-based systems.
 The types of higher education have become more diverse and non-
government institutions have appeared in big numbers, along with
foreign universities or partnership programs with foreign 4
universities.

5. HIGHER EDUCATION IN ARAB REGION
 Buckner (2011) identified three reform strategies in Arab world
 Neoliberal reforms aim to expand access to higher education while
offsetting costs to consumers and the private sector. This includes the
establishment of private universities, and programs such as “Open
Learning” and “Parallel Learning” whereby students pay small fees to
study programs Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia have applied this model
with varying degrees of success.
 Quality Assurance. Maghreb countries emphasized the importance of
the state in providing higher education while pursuing strategies to
strengthen the internal and external efficiency of tertiary education.
Pursued large-scale quality assurance programs inspired by the Bologna
process for better alignment and greater student mobility.
 Imported Internationalization. Gulf states resorted to “modernizing”
higher education systems in the form of extensively privatizing the
provision of higher education and also establishing extensive international 5
partnerships with American and British universities .

6. ACHIEVEMENTS OF A DECADE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
 Due to huge efforts exerted by Arab countries, many achievements were
realized in the last decade.
 These achievements differed from one country to another according to
prevailing socioeconomic and political conditions (El Amin, 2009).
 They are mostly in domains
• Educational opportunities.
 Enrollment in higher education showed an increase of 117% after controlling for
population increase, and gross enrollment ratio (GER) increased from 18% to
22% on average for Arab region, at 4% over last five years.
 Female enrollment increased with Gender Parity Index (GPI) equaling 1on average
with several exceeding it.
 Number of universities has more than doubled in last decade,
 Considerable diversity in the features of these institutions: state/private education;
national/foreign universities; local programs/partnership programs with foreign
universities abroad, etc.
6

7. ACHIEVEMENTS OF A DECADE OF HIGHER
EDUCATION
 Quality of Education
• 14 countries have established national commissions or committees for
accreditation and quality assurance
• Some universities have started a self-assessment process, while others
have sought accreditation by international accreditation agencies
• Faculty qualifications have witnessed an improvement with 60% of
professors holding PhD. degrees, although the majority focuses on
science and technology disciplines
 Other Achievements
• A continued trend toward increased higher education budgets.
Compare very well with international standards with respect to
percentage of GDP spent on education.
• New education projects by public and private sectors have been
launched and the trend is for more 4-year universities and technical 7
institutes

8. ATTEMPTS AT QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ARAB
STATES
 Several initiatives towards the formulation of
national and inter-Arab QA systems were launched
motivated by the desire to strengthen collaboration
and cooperation in quality assurance among the
Arab countries
• establishment of a regional mechanism for quality
assurance and accreditation under the auspices of the
Association of Arab Universities
• the creation of an Arab Establishment for Program QA
(AEPQA)
• ALECSO, 2008) in which it called for setting Arab
standards for quality and academic excellence 8

9. ATTEMPTS AT QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ARAB
STATES
 Several similar and overlapping initiatives at the regional level:
• The Arab Council for QA established by Association of Arab Universities (AArU)
who has produced institutional framework guidelines for self and external
assessment, measurements and general conditions for assessment and accreditation.
• „The Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education‟ (ANQAHE) was
launched in 2007 as an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organization
established in association with the International Network for Quality Assurance
Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE). It serves as a platform to exchange
information; disseminate knowledge; and improve professional expertise of the
national quality assurance agencies, to enhance the collaboration between similar
quality assurance organizations in the Arab and with other regional and
international quality assurance networks.
• Arab Quality Assurance and Accreditation Network “ARQAANE” was established in
2007, as an independent, non-profit organization aiming at raising the quality of
higher education in the Arab world and cooperation between the Arab Quality
Assurance and Accreditation Networks.
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10. ATTEMPTS AT QUALITY ASSURANCE IN ARAB
STATES
 International donors have also contributed in promoting higher
education QA.
• In partnership with UNESCO, the World Bank has launched a Global
Initiative for QA Capacity (GIQAC) to support policy dialogues between all
QA regional initiatives and conducted a scoping study to define the needs of
the national QA organizations. In addition funded projects in several
countries.
• The UNDP higher education (subject assessment) project, targeted universities
in 14 Arab Countries. 73 programs were reviewed in Computer Science
, Business Administration, Education, and Engineering. Furthermore, the
project has built QA regional capacities of experienced peer reviewers.
• The British Council funded a regional QA activity in the Near East and North
Africa (NENA) aiming at producing common guidelines to facilitate
developing regional standards and subject benchmarks to redesign the
curriculum, develop approaches to learning/teaching and assess student
performance against desired learning outcomes.
• The German DAAD‟s activities focus on international dialogues via
conferences, visits and professional training in self and external evaluation and
capacity building. 10

11. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITY
 Despite increased enrollment, Arab countries ranks sixth in
the region and less than developed countries.
 A drop-off of males seeking higher education.
 Arab countries graduate a disproportionately higher
number (46%) from arts, and only 8% hold masters or
PhD degrees with 92% bachelors holders
(UNESCO, 2009).
 Average spending per student is around $2,500 while it is
around $14,000 in OECD countries.
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12. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: QUALITY OF EDUCATION
 Curriculum quality, there is a consensus that it is weak; its content out-
dated and lacks relevance to development and labor market needs.
• graduates' academic standards in terms of language, math
and critical thinking are weak.
• There is a lack of lifelong learning culture with a low rate of
students beyond age of 29 in higher education
• Insufficient levels of leadership development opportunities
through extra curricula activities and curricula enrichment
• Efforts centered on raising public awareness of importance
of community engagement and not on key changes in
curriculum and community.
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13. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: QUALITY OF EDUCATION
 Assessment is a weakness because of its
 emphasis on memory recall of knowledge,
 lack of focus on higher-level cognitive skills, and
 Absence of internal or external mechanisms for
ensuring transparency and fairness.
 Student support systems are not strong and targeted
support for various special needs is patchy.
 Quality assurance and enhancement systems at
institutional level are still minority, and a quality
culture in which annual feedback, evaluation and
monitored actions plans are the norm has not yet evolved. 13

14. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: QUALITY OF EDUCATION
 No regional higher education body to ensure standards and
national QA associations suffer from following shortcomings
• Overwhelming majority of them remain oriented toward the “accreditation”
of private universities, which is classified as quality control more than quality
assurance;
• They all remain in a transitory phase and have yet to arrive at an
independent, integrated structure or one that enjoys authority or moral value in
the entire sector.
• None of them has become an independent institution with moral authority
and a significant impact on state education institutions, and their criteria do not
become an intrinsic part of university life, or in classes, or in the management
of higher education.
• In many cases, they have become part of the bureaucratic system, in terms of
work mechanisms, and at times they have become bureaucratic arms for
monitoring quality at private sector institutions and punishing institutions that
are violating the regulations in force. 14

15. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: QUALITY OF EDUCATION
 Faculty
• Need for professional development and skills-based training especially
in technology and participative teaching techniques.
• Teaching is didactic with no emphasis on students becoming
independent learners and critical thinkers.
• Current system and lack of tenure does not reward faculty
performance and full time engagement in academia, and this affects
development of a research culture and knowledge production.
• Insufficient institutional resources for teaching and research.
• A problem of particular concern for universities teaching in Arabic is
the limited choice they have in terms of available textbooks and the
shortage of teaching materials.
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16. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: QUALITY OF EDUCATION
 Governments' role.
• Centralized education systems were organized to facilitate
quantitative expansion rather performance-oriented systems
with emphasis on quality and continuous improvement.
• Governments lack experience in policy and strategy
development as well as in planning and management of higher
education systems .
• Ministries imposed unnecessary rigid controls and their higher
education policy did not promote integrated, decentralized
decision-making, and greater efficiency
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17. HIGHER EDUCATION CHALLENGES IN ARAB
REGION: QUALITY OF EDUCATION
Conclusion:
 Tangible achievements, when it comes to improving quality, are not
noticed in Arab region.
 This was confirmed by World Bank report on the region “While the
countries here invest a higher proportion of their gross domestic
product on education than other regions in the world, the region
continues to face challenges in developing a high-quality education
system at all levels and promoting life-long learning and training that
responds to the needs of the labor market” (World Bank, 2007).
 Generally, the efforts exerted by Arab countries in this domain are
insufficient in today‟s world of knowledge, competitiveness, rapid
transformation and students‟ increased demand for enrolment 17

18. FUTURE DIRECTIONS
 The Arab region education system faces several threats:
• the young demographics of the Arab population with 56% in the 20-
29% age bracket, as compared to 25% in OECD countries;
• dwindling resources and accordingly less spending on higher education,
• brain drain with an estimated 85% of PhD. holders not returning to the
region.
 Arab region should work on launching interventions that would yield
quick results through high impact initiatives in the following domains:
• human capital and skills of faculty and staff in higher education;
• infrastructure and resources;
• collaboration and connectivity;
• quality and programs.
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19. RECOMMENDATIONS
More specifically, strategies that to be adopted should
include
1. Offsetting financial needs of the education system through cost recovery,
outsourcing to private sector and other best practices.
2. Increasing international universities with branches in the region and
establishment of new private universities that endorse students‟ development
of 21st century skills.
3. Academic programs and curricula must be revisited so that intended learning
outcomes reflect international requirements with greater emphasis on higher
cognitive skills such as evaluation, critical analysis and synthesis.
4. Adopting a pro-active approach to staff training and development for teaching,
learning and assessment.
5. Virtual networking and collaborations among institutions and academics
including linkages to Arab academics abroad. This will help in establishing
needed external benchmarks against which to judge institutional performance.
6. Formalizing and institutionalizing quality assurance and enhancement systems
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20. RECOMMENDATIONS
7. Use of technology in upgrading skills and capabilities.
8. Increasing chances for student participation and leadership
development, in addition to developing their evaluation and
critical analysis skills. Instructional methods that engage
students in classroom experience should be leveraged and
curricula enrichment and extra-curricular activities should be
initiated.
9. Improving student support systems.
10. Improving teaching and resources in Arabic and supporting
enhancement of language skills.
11. Establishment and support of scholarly societies to enhance
research structure
12. Enhancing governments‟ capabilities in strategic planning and
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management of higher education

21. THANK YOU
K. El Hassan, PhD.
kelhasan@aub.edu.lb 21