Middle East Education Thought Leadership Forum

01-11-2021
 

Was been hosted on a virtual platform under the patronage of the General Secretary of the Association of Arab Universities (AArU) his Excellency Professor Amr Ezzat Salama, in the presence of the Assistant Secretaries General of AArU, Professor Abdelrahim A. Hunaiti and Professor Khemissi Hamidi. In particular, the forum’s program contained global perspectives on higher education, perspectives from different countries on their plans for higher education to meet the aspirations of their visions, while the forum conducted by AArU and organized by Gulf Conferences organization.

 

On his speech, Professor Amr Ezzat Salama pointed out the challenges that Arab universities are facing such as; most of Arab students enrolled in humanities discipline that approximately 65 percent of them, while the rest enrolled in scientific disciplines. Moreover, most of Arab scientist immigrate to US and Europe, as well as Arab graduate students prefer to stay out of their home-countries. Unfortunately, only 11 Arab universities were ranked in the top 500 universities in the world recently, in 2022 QS ranking. Moreover, Salama mentioned the AArU’s promising projects and strategic academic programs those are in cooperation with many Arabic and global institutions.

Subsequently, this forum will help address policies related to online education by the Ministers of Education and Quality Assurance leaders’ recommendations. Which will be hopefully used in the UNESCO World Higher Education Conference that will be held in the view of the global health crisis and will take place in the middle of 2022.

Hence, it was a great opportunity for leaders of presenting and offering their expertise and insight. For their part, they referred to the experiences of their countries and universities and the challenges they faced during the Corona epidemic.

Pleasurably, the forum VIP guests were included the Ministers of Education of the Arab League and with an expected number of Delegates from 400 universities, such as; Professor Khalid Atef Abdul Ghaffar is the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Egypt; Professor Omran Al-Qeeb, the minister of higher education and scientific research in Libya; Professor Amal Mint Cheikh Abdallah the Mauritania's minister for higher education and scientific research; Professor Aawatif Hayar the minister of Solidarity, Social Integration and Family; Thafer Y. Assaraira the Chairman of the Higher Education Accreditation and Quality Assurance Commission in Jordan; and Professor Ali Aerjash the Undersecretary Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Yemen.