Industry experts say Middle Eastern universities prioritise knowledge sharing and work together to grow the sector
Only by embracing collaboration will MENA universities create a thriving education ecosystem where institutions can engage their communities and collectively improve.
At the MENA Universities Summit session hosted by Times Higher Education, in partnership with Al Tamimi & Company, panellists discussed collaboration between universities in the Middle East.
Chair Ivor McGettigan, partner at Al Tamimi & Company, asked what a successful university ecosystem looked like and how the Middle East could create one.
Dr Tenia Kyriazi, deputy director of academic operations at Middlesex University Dubai, said a collaborative ecosystem should feature formal and informal networks.
“You have collaborations between the private sector and the university, collaborations within institutions and across disciplines, with the government sector and between the regulator and the university,” Dr Kyriazi said.
“An ideal ecosystem would be one that has a little bit of all of that: informal and formal, private sector, government sector, state universities, private universities and between academics.”
McGettigan said that while small, informal networks had been established to focus on practical issues such as data protection and designing future campuses, there was still some “reticence” towards more formal partnerships.
Hugh Martin, registrar and chief administrative officer at the British University in Dubai, said one of the barriers to collaboration was the perception that universities were in competition for students and funding.
He said senior leaders in the UAE, including the Minister for Education, had urged institutions to share knowledge to improve the sector.
“Talking to each other and collaborating happens already in academia, that’s one of the purposes of a university. So, there’s no reason why those professionals who are running a university shouldn’t be doing the same thing,” Martin said.
“They shouldn’t be hiding or recoiling in suspicion of each other that we might be trying to share trade secrets. What we do is share with each other potential solutions. And right now, during the Covid pandemic, this couldn’t be more important.
“It doesn’t work in the education sphere to spend time reinventing the wheel and being suspicious of each other.”
Kyriazi said university leadership needed to “sell the narrative of collaboration within the institution” and seek partnerships with their wider communities, for example, to promote environmental activities or personal well-being.
“We need to see the big picture. It’s not just our university and how many students we are recruiting and how many graduate. We need to be looking at that, but we also need to have a vision of the role higher education wants to play in the community,” she said.
Watch the session on demand above or on the THE Connect YouTube channel.
Find out more about Al Tamimi & Company.
