Yemen: New degree to put gender back into development

Date: Sunday, August 02, 2009
Source: Yemen Times

SANA'A - In a country repeatedly rated last in the Global Gender Gap report, a new master's degree at the University of Sana'a promises Yemeni women a brighter future, by combining gender and development studies.

The Gender-Development Research and Study Center is encouraging university graduates with high levels of English proficiency to apply for its program in Gender and International Development, to start in February 2010.

"Our Masters students will have the capacity for critical thinking, to see the problem of development deeply," said Dr. Husnia Al-Kadiri, head of the center.

"If women participate in the master's, they will not represent all Yemeni women, but they will work on how to push education for girls," said Al-Kadiri, "which is the most important tool to make women's participation visible in development."

"Women are playing a role in development, but it is silent- not visible," she said.

Only 55 percent of Yemeni girls are enrolled in basic education compared to 75 percent of boys, according to the government's latest statistics.

Although United Nations statistics increase both these percentages by around 10 percent, they report that girls' attendance in basic education reaches no more than 41 percent.

The disempowerment of women and children was one of the four underlying reasons for the poor outcomes of development interventions in Yemen, according to the UN's 2005 Common Country Assessment.

The three others were lack of transparency and participation, inequitable and unsustainable use of water resources, and the growth of unemployment in a rapidly expanding population.

The two-year master's program is the first of its kind in the region, said Al-Kadiri, although the American universities of Cairo and Beirut also offer gender-based courses.

The International Development Center at Roskilde University in Denmark is supporting the program, and international specialists will teach for the first few years while they train a permanent staff.

"Gender in development is making sure men and women both participate in development," said Dr. Saed Al-Saba, head of documentation and information at the center. "It is ensuring both women and men are given equal opportunities."

The course is definitely not only for women, she said, because the presence of men is vital for women to be able to seize their right to participate in development.

"Men must understand that gender in development is not dangerous to men, it is just about equal opportunity between the sexes," she said.

Women and men think differently, explained Al-Kadiri, but the potentials of both are complementary. Both sexes must be included in development so that half a country's potential is not lost along the way.

"If we give the chance to women to participate, the potential of both sexes will accelerate the wheel of development," she said.

"When you integrate gender, you can solve a lot of problems," added Aisha Saeed, head of the Protection Program at Save the Children, who worked with the center in 2008 on research on gender-based violence.

BETTER GENDER BUDGETING

"[The news master's] is very important because people don't know how to integrate gender in development," said Khadija Radman, deputy minister for women affairs at the Ministry of Social Affairs.

The program will help integrate gender-related considerations into government and non-governmental organization plans, according to Radman, notably through gender budgeting.

"They don't know how to do it!" she said of gender budgeting, or equal and fair distribution of resources between men and women-centered projects in Yemen.

Only 33 percent of governmental, non-governmental and international organizations took gender into consideration while drawing up their budgets, according to a 2009 survey by the Yemeni Strategic Development Center on gender-responsive budgeting.

"Gender budgeting is the biggest issue in development," said Al-Kadiri, who explains that with it, a majority of problems could be solved.

The program aims to teach students about gender budgeting, as well as more development-orientated subjects such as conflict resolution.

EVIDENCE-BASED STUDIES

Part of the Gender-Development Research and Study Center's work over the last few years has been very productive, said Al-Kadiri.

Campaign-orientated research into early marriage in particular bore fruit, as it contributed the beginning of a discussion on a minimum age for marriage. Although a law that sets 17 as the minimum legal age to marry is now being stalled in parliament, the discussion is an achievement, she said.

When you have statistical evidence of early marriage, female genital mutilation or gender-based violence, it is harder for people to ignore the problem, she said.

Hard facts and dialogue are a key to closing the gender gap, from the family-level to government.

In Yemen, only one of the 301 seats in parliament is held by a woman, and two ministries -the Ministry of Human Rights and the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs- are headed by women.

To date, women are outnumbered four to one in legislatures around the world, according to the UN.

"Despite the progress that has been made, six out of ten of world's poorest people are still women and girls, less than 16 percent of the world's parliamentarians are women, two thirds of all children shut outside the school gates are girls," according to the United Nations' Development Program's Web site.

Over 60 percent of all unpaid family workers globally are women, women still earn on average 17 percent less than men, and about one-third of women suffer gender-based violence during their lives, it says.

ACTION NOT WORDS

The program has received support from the University of Sana'a, said Al-Kadiri, but it seeks more technical support from international donors and UN agencies.

"This is the nucleus for changing society," she said. "This center with other partners will be a good change agent for Yemen, even regionally where conflict is high."

Al-Kadiri also urged local women's rights organizations to support the center's efforts and show a greater presence at its meetings.

"Talking about gender equality is important, but doing is more important," she said.

Although it showed improvement in scores from previous years, Yemen was ranked 130 out of 130 countries in the 2008 Global Gender Gap Report, an annual report issued by the World Economic Forum.

Saudi Arabia: Groundbreaking for Women’s University today

JEDDAH: The Riyadh Women’s University, which is designed to become the world’s largest institution of higher learning exclusively for women, will have 13 colleges, including those for medicine, dentistry, nursing, naturopathy and pharmacology and a 700-bed hospital. The project will be completed by 2010.

Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will lay the foundation stone today for the university’s new campus.

“After we received instructions from higher authorities to establish a full-fledged university, we have consulted international engineering houses for the purpose of designing a world-class campus that can accommodate 40,000 students,” said Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf. “It will be the largest specialized campus for women in the world,” he added.

“King Abdullah has shown special interest in the project and has been following up every development related to this university,” the minister said. “The buildings of the campus will be completed within the next two years,” he said.

He said the university would play a big role in promoting women’s education in the Kingdom. “The project also aims at improving the condition of Saudi women and enabling them to participate in the country’s development process efficiently.”

Princess Al-Jowhara bint Fahd, president of the university, praised King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan for their tremendous support to Riyadh Women’s University, which she said will usher in a new era in higher education for women in Saudi Arabia. “We want to make it a leading international institution,” she said.

She disclosed plans about tie-ups with prominent universities inside and outside the Kingdom to promote research. The Women’s University, along with its affiliated colleges, has so far enrolled 17,000 students, she added.

Al-Jowhara spoke about the university’s plan to focus on educational programs that are essential to meet the Kingdom’s job market requirements. “We have devised its educational programs after consulting different ministries, including the ministries of labor, commerce and industry, and economy and planning,” she said.

Speaking about the new campus, Al-Jowhara said it would be spread over an area of eight million square meters along Airport Road in northern Riyadh. The new campus will double the university’s capacity. King Abdullah has instructed the university’s officials to do their best to improve the condition of women.

“The new colleges will accommodate 1,500 students this year,” the princess said, adding that existing colleges would be restructured in line with job market needs. The university and its affiliated colleges have given admission to 61 percent of secondary school graduates in the Riyadh province.

-- Arab News

Saudi Arabia: Women’s varsity to have new campus - King Abdullah to lay foundation soon

JEDDAH: Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah will lay the foundation stone of the new campus of Kingdom’s first women university shortly, Princess Al-Jowhara bint Fahd, president of the university, announced yesterday. Located north of Riyadh, the university will have 13 new colleges.

She praised King Abdullah and Crown Prince Sultan for their tremendous support to Riyadh Women's University, which, she said, will usher in a new era in higher education for women in Saudi Arabia. “We want to make it a leading international university,” Princess Al-Jowhara told Al-Riyadh Arabic daily. She disclosed plans about tie-ups with prominent universities inside and outside the Kingdom to promote research. The women’s university, along with its affiliated colleges, has so far enrolled 17,000 women students, she added.

She spoke about the university’s plan to focus on educational programs that are essential to meet the Kingdom’s job market requirements. She also praised Saudi women for their increasing role in the Kingdom’s development activities.

The university will have three health colleges: A college for nursing, another for pharmacology and a college for naturopathy. Other colleges are for administrative sciences; computer science and technology; nursery training; sciences, languages and translation.

“The new colleges will accommodate 1,500 students this academic year,” the princess said, adding that existing colleges would be restructured in tune with job market requirements. The university and its affiliated colleges have given admission to 61 percent of secondary school graduates in the Riyadh region.

Al-Jowhara said her university devised its educational programs after consulting different ministries including the ministries of labor, commerce and industry and economy and planning. “We have prepared a strategic plan for the next 10 years.”

Speaking about the new university campus, she said it would be spread over an area of eight million square meters along the Airport Road, north of Riyadh. “The king has pledged his moral and material support for the university project and has been following up the project despite his busy itinerary,” she added.

Princess Al-Jowhara advised Saudi women to adhere to Islamic culture and values and work hard to realize the hopes and aspirations of their country’s leadership. She stressed the need to resolve the unemployment problem among Saudi women by creating new job opportunities for them.

The university recently announced its plan to provide a six-week summer training for women graduates. The training program is one of the university’s major projects and is to take place each summer over the next four years.

Al-Jowhara said the program would be continuously reviewed and updated according to job market needs.

By P.K. Abdul Ghafour, Arab News

Saudi Arabia: Girl selected as youth ambassador

JEDDAH –A first-year student at the College of Business Administration, Ala’a Al–Mizyen, has recently been selected as Saudi Youth Ambassador for the Middle East Youth Initiative. Ala’a, 18, is also the founder president of the on-campus student organization Saudi Arabia’s Women of Tomorrow.

Saudi Arabia’s Women of Tomorrow aims to instill and nurture the leadership role in female students, Ala’a said. She looks forward to providing opportunities for character development and enrichment, to extend networking and team-building beyond classrooms.

The student organization organizes periodic debates on current local and international issues. Moreover, presentations are made by students on matters that interest the present generation.

Ala’a finds much of her inspiration and enthusiasm from the global activist work she regularly takes part in, most recently the Young Arab Leaders/Learning from the Future Conference held in Dubai.

Ala’a was also selected by the British Council from a pool of applicants to attend the Learning from the Future workshop. As the youngest and only undergraduate college student chosen, she represented Saudi Arabia at the workshop covering global and regional issues such as climate change, the multi-polar world, energy crisis, and relations between the Arab World and the West.

Presently Ala’a is working on her first article for the Middle East Youth Initiative which will be based on national educational reform.

She is optimistic about national women’s development, seeing great potential in her colleagues and is devoted to increasing the variety and effectiveness of female leaders.

By Sabahat F. Siddiqi, Saudi Gazette

Saudi Arabia: Varsities to absorb 86% high school grads

Eighty-six percent of secondary school graduates will get seats at Saudi universities this year. Higher Education Minister Dr. Khaled Al-Anqari has given his instructions to universities in this respect.

“This is the highest university intake in the world. In most countries a maximum of only 50 percent secondary school graduates get to universities,” the minister said.

The tremendous increase in intake comes with the opening of 12 new universities and several colleges in different parts of the Kingdom. During the last four years the number of government universities in the Kingdom rose from eight to 20.

Al-Anqari said some 5,000 students would be sent abroad for higher studies, especially for master’s and doctoral courses and fellowships, in the fourth phase of King Abdullah Scholarship Program.

More than 40,000 Saudi students are currently pursuing higher studies in universities and institutes in Europe, America, China, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. “We are studying prospects of increasing the allowances given to Saudi students abroad,” he said.

Last month Al-Anqari signed a number of contracts worth more than SR1.23 billion to establish higher education facilities and new colleges in various parts of the Kingdom. They include medical, engineering and computer science colleges.

“The new colleges will help absorb more secondary school graduates in the future,” he added.

Efforts are under way to establish campuses of King Abdulaziz University (KAU) in Rabigh, Khulais and Kamil. Makkah Gov. Prince Khaled Al-Faisal has instructed municipalities to allocate five million square meters of land in each town for the projects.

Subsequently the three municipalities have set up committees to select suitable locations for the projects. “The selection will be completed within a week,” one official said.

Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Yubi, undersecretary at KAU, said 11 colleges for boys and girls would be established in the three cities with Rabigh, receiving the highest number of colleges.

Six colleges for medicine, engineering, computer science and information technology (IT), business administration, applied medical sciences and sciences will be established in Rabigh.

Al-Yubi said three colleges would be established in Khulais for applied medical sciences, computer science and IT and sciences, and two in Kamil for sciences, computer science and IT.

Prince Khaled announced the opening of KAU campuses when he visited the towns recently.

-- Arab News

Middle East: As numbers decline in US, women's colleges boom globally

Students from women's colleges around the globe are descending on the idyllic Massachusetts campus of Mount Holyoke College this week, a symbolic meeting where America's oldest women's college will welcome the newest members of a movement it helped inspire.

As their numbers decline in the United States, women's colleges are booming in much of the developing world _ places such as Africa, Asia and the Middle East. They've become a trendy tool for jump-starting economic growth and political development, and for helping break down barriers in the same way their U.S. counterparts have been doing since the 19th century.

U.S. women's colleges have sometimes struggled to find a new role in the era of coeducation. One that some are embracing is to mentor the new wave of women's institutions. The leadership conference at Mount Holyoke's South Hadley campus is part of a growing collaboration between the established U.S. women's colleges and their newer counterparts elsewhere.

"If you educate a woman, you have educated the whole world," said Elleen Mazorodze, a student at the Women's University in Africa, a six-year-old institution trying to keep its feet in tumultuous Zimbabwe, and one of the students at the conference.

Her arguments echo those of experts who believe the returns on educating women in developing countries are higher than those on educating men _ though there is still much debate about whether more primary education or colleges should be the priority.

Women's colleges began appearing in the United States in the 19th century, when women had few avenues to education, and when many thought that's the way it should be.

"You have, 150 years later in these developing countries, a very similar situation," said Patti McGill Peterson, a senior associate at Institute for Higher Education Policy, and the former president of Wells College, a women's school in New York. But as college access and the value in educating women become clear, "Suddenly people say, 'How can we do that?'"

In the U.S., the number of women's colleges has declined from well over 200 to around 60.
Overseas, women's colleges have existed for decades in Asian countries like Japan and India. But experts say the number trying to emulate the American model is growing rapidly _ though the trend is hard to quantify, given varying definitions of what comprises a college.

Among those emerging in recent years are Zimbabwe's Women's University in Africa, the Kiriri Women's University of Science and Technology in Kenya, and Effat College in Saudi Arabia. Pakistan and Dubai also have made a big push.

One getting particular attention is the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh, the brainchild of social entrepreneur Kamal Ahmad, which plans to open in the fall of 2009. He's enlisted the former president of Oberlin College to lead the school and a former manager of Harvard University's multli-billion-dollar endowment to help reach an initial fundraising target of $50 million.

Ahmed believes aid organizations and the World Bank have harmed developing countries by focusing too much on early education. That may get more citizens into factory jobs but it doesn't produce enough leaders. Ramping up higher education for women, Ahmed said, is the best way to have a broad impact _ even on people who won't attend the college but see others succeed.

"The signaling effect is when you're a 12- or 13-year-old girl in Afghanistan or Pakistan or Bangladesh nobody really tells you you're going to go anywhere," he said.

There's always a bond between students of women's colleges, no matter how different they are.
"It's very strange. I don't know how to explain it," said Seung Yeon "Christine" Chung, a student at Ewha Womans University in South Korea visiting Mount Holyoke. Ewha, founded by an American missionary, is highly ranked and produced the country's first female prime minister.

"We come from different backgrounds, different education, but we have this determination and the good will to change the world and take a leading role in everything we're involved in," she said.

The benefits cut both ways. Facing a diminishing applicant pool, American women's colleges have also recruited many women from developing countries, like Nana Yaa Boakyewaa Amoah, who attended Mt. Holyoke from Ghana.

"Institutions like Mt. Holyoke definitely have helped. They've given women back home the opportunity to realize they can make a difference," she said. Only recently have girls in her country gotten any educational opportunities, she said, and there are still no women's colleges, though she thinks one would be valuable.

Other schools broadening international ties include Chatham College in Pittsburgh, which has a range of international partnerships. Neighboring Smith College recently joined Mount Holyoke to found a group called Women's Education Worldwide, which is working on programs such as faculty and student exchanges and curriculum development.

"When we talk to these people founding these colleges, it feels a lot like the U.S. in the 19th century," said Jesse Lytle, an assistant to Mount Holyoke's president and coordinator of Women's Education Worldwide.

"They're pioneers. They're really scrappy and innovative, and they're really having to dig down deep to get these institutions up and running," he said.

U.S. women's colleges "have a fair amount of history and institutional strength from being around for so long," Lytle said. "We don't think the American model can just be imposed on everyone, but we hope they'll draw from inspiration from those that have made it work."

Officials from a new Saudi Arabian women's college recently told Lytle they were still struggling to develop a sense of cohesiveness among their students.

"They want to build up this feeling that they're part of something bigger," he said. "They're tapping into this women's college tradition they thought would be really powerful, to help their students understand what they're doing now and what it might look like in a century."

By JUSTIN POPE, The Associated Press

Middle East: ‘Sisters’ Colleges See a Bounty in the Middle East

Women’s colleges are a dwindling breed in the United States.

So this spring the admissions deans of the five leading women’s colleges — Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley and Smith — went recruiting to a place where single-sex education is more than a niche product: the Middle East.

For three weeks they visited schools in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, describing what a liberal-arts women’s college can offer academically ambitious students. (They skipped Saudi Arabia, where, their trip coordinator warned, they might need a male escort.)

Everywhere, they talked about how women benefited from having their own colleges where women make up a large part of the faculty and students are encouraged to excel in male-dominated fields like science and math. And they flaunted their accomplished alumnae, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Emily Dickinson, Diane Sawyer, Katharine Hepburn and Madeleine K. Albright.

“We still prepare a disproportionate number of women scientists,” Jenny Rickard, dean of admissions at Bryn Mawr, said in describing the presentations. “We’re really about the empowerment of women and enabling women to get a top-notch education.”

Like universities nationwide, the five women’s colleges are expanding their overseas recruiting, and although reaching out to the Middle East seems logical to them, in some ways it is an odd fit.

While single-sex schools in the Middle East are protected environments, reflecting women’s traditional roles in Muslim society, the American colleges, for all their white-glove history and academic prominence, are liberal strongholds where students fiercely debate political action, gender identity and issues like “heteronormativity,” the marginalizing of standards that are other than heterosexual. Middle Eastern students who already attend these colleges tell of a transition that can be jarring.

Pasangi Perera Weerasingag, who attended a coeducational British-model high school in Dubai, said that when she arrived at Mount Holyoke last year, she was shocked by the presence of so many lesbians among the students. But she adjusted, she says, and now loves the environment, with the widespread willingness to discuss race and class (“so refreshing”) and her classmates’ engagement in politics.

On their trip to the Middle East, the American deans visited American international schools, British-model schools, Indian-model schools, coeducational schools filled with children of expatriates and schools of local girls who do not much mix with men. Reactions varied, according to e-mail messages from counselors and students at the schools, but over all the region seemed fertile ground for recruiting. For some families, the colleges represented a compromise between the familiarity of home and an all-out plunge into American ways.

“You could almost see light bulbs going off in student’s minds, as if, ‘Why didn’t I think of them a while ago?’ " said Jennifer Melton, a counselor at the American School in Dubai.

“You could also see parents exhale with less anxiety around the process,” Ms. Melton said, “and the fact that there really are institutions that are a good fit for their daughters.”

In the 1960s, there were some 300 women’s colleges in the United States; now there are fewer than 60. But Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Mount Holyoke, Wellesley and Smith — known as the Sisters, those of the storied Seven Sisters left after Radcliffe merged with Harvard and Vassar began admitting men — are thriving, attracting record numbers of high-achieving applicants, who are drawn by their history of academic prominence.

Still, most American high school girls never consider applying to a women’s college. And because the Sisters do not get as many applicants as comparable coeducational colleges, they are not as selective as other top institutions. So an influx of applications from the Middle East would be especially welcome.

But the admissions deans say their foray to the Middle East was not an effort to find young Muslim women who could be comfortable only in a world of women. “People keep waiting for us to say we went because we were expecting it to be so conservative that it would be a great fit,” said Jennifer Desjarlais, Wellesley’s dean of admission. “That wasn’t why we went. That never occurred to us.”

The idea, she said, grew out of an international conference, where counselors from the Middle East said they wished more American liberal arts colleges would visit their schools.

Ms. Weerasingag, who is Sri Lankan but grew up in Dubai, said that when she told friends she was going to Mount Holyoke, “they all said, ‘Why, why would you go to a women’s college?’ and immediately began to make jokes about homosexuality.”

She said the number of lesbian students on campus “was the only part that came as a culture shock to me.”

“It was very open — there were open displays of affection,” she added. “At the beginning, there were times when I’d have to close my eyes and say, ‘O.K., I’m at Mount Holyoke, and it’s different.’ But that lasted only a week or so, and now I have so many friends who are openly gay, and it makes no difference.”

Ms. Weerasingag, 20, finds other aspects of Mount Holyoke life invigorating. “We didn’t have a political atmosphere in Dubai,” she said. “At Mount Holyoke, during the primaries I couldn’t even sleep, because everyone around me was so involved.”

At the recruiting presentations, some students saw the women’s colleges as their best route to the United States. “My options of traveling to the United States are limited by my conservative upbringing,” said Ascia al-Faraj, a student at the American International School in Kuwait. “But the chances of attending one of the Sisters schools is more likely.” She plans to apply to several of the Sisters.

Mark Ray, a counselor at the school, said he believed that in general, “parents would be much more likely to send their daughters to one of these schools rather than to a coed university.”

But in many Middle Eastern families, it remains unthinkable to send an 18-year-old daughter to America alone. So there were questions about transfer admissions from young women who planned to start college close to home, said Diane Anci, dean of admission at Mount Holyoke.

“We also, on some occasions, got questions about living off campus, and the neighborhood around the college,” she said, “which meant, ‘Could my mother or auntie come and live in an off-campus house with me?’ ”

Even before the trip, the Sisters had been told that single-sex residences might be an important draw for Middle Eastern students, Ms. Anci said.

Students were more interested, though, in hearing about the freedom they would have at the women’s colleges, Mr. Ray said.

“The greatest concern expressed by the ladies, which was quickly dispelled, was their idea they would be in a lockdown environment,” he said.

The deans made clear that was not the case. “None of us is a nunnery, so much of our presentation is to reassure young women that there are opportunities to interact with young men,” said Audrey Smith, dean of enrollment at Smith College.

Indeed, at each of the presentations, the Sisters stressed the frequent contact with men at nearby colleges, the possibility of cross-registering for classes and the coeducational clubs.

Kristen Duff, an Australian student at the American School in Dubai, said that she planned to apply to Barnard but that many of her Arab and part-Arab friends had not been won over.

“They have conservative parents,” she said, “and I think that in their independence in college they really want to attend coed schools in a foreign country. Going to a girls’ school would seem like a step backwards.”

Over all, the deans said, selling single-sex education was less difficult than selling the liberal arts in a region where professional education is more the norm.

“The question we got most often was, ‘What would I do afterwards?’ ” said Ms. Rickard, of Bryn Mawr. “I talked about how liberal arts prepared you for the jobs that haven’t been invented yet. The example I’d give is my own career. I was a liberal arts student when there were no computers, and then I found myself at a software company.”

Several high school counselors said their students had been impressed with the lively confidence of the deans, viewing them as role models. Ms Anci, of Mount Holyoke, recalls a like moment.

“After one long presentation in Dubai, where the audience was rapt,” she said, “one of the girls came up afterward, very bright-eyed, and said: ‘I don’t know exactly what I want to do, but I know I want to do great things. And I know if I come to one of your schools, I will do great things.’ ”

By TAMAR LEWIN, New York Times

Saudi Arabia: Students survive Miami culture shock

BY OSCAR CORRAL, from the Miami Herald

Rahmah Ali Al Shamrani leaned over a life-size mannequin, which was eerily breathing and blinking like a person, and sheepishly adjusted her head scarf in front of several other nursing students at Miami Dade College.

While working at a hospital in her native Saudi Arabia, Shamrani wears outfits that cover her entire body except her face. For her classes at MDC, she wears a lab coat -- but also covers her hair as a sign of respect to her Saudi peers and her culture.

The biggest cultural shock that she experienced in Miami: women studying with men.
''There, we are not allowed to have male friends -- only female,'' said Shamrani, who wore a diamond nose stud``We cannot shake hands with men. Here, we study together. It was unusual at the beginning. Here, we have more freedom.''

Shamrani is part of the first class of students from the Saudi Institute for Health Services to come to Miami as part of a six-week exchange program with MDC to learn in health-related fields. This week, the students learned about monitoring patients using MDC's human patient simulator laboratory.

The program represents a new chapter for MDC and illustrates the swelling number of Saudi Arabian students coming to the United States to study.

Last year, the number of Saudi students studying in the United States shot up 128 percent to 7,886 from 3,448 the year before. Saudi enrollment in U.S. universities, second only to Turkey among Middle Eastern countries, spiked last year after the Saudi government started the Saudi Scholarship Program, according to the Institute of International Education. Florida is second only to Virginia in the number of Saudi students that have studied in the United States under that program.

MDC Professor Carol Miller, who taught the group, said the students spent months going through a lengthy visa application process, where they had to fly to another city in Saudi Arabia to interview with several American and Saudi officials. The year after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Saudi enrollment in American universities plunged 25 percent and continued to decline until 2005, when participants in the scholarship program began flowing in, according to IIE.

The six female nurses and four male opticians who studied at MDC will complete the program during a ceremony Friday.

It marks an unusual relationship in which young people from one of the most religiously conservative societies on Earth are sent to study in one of the world's most famous party towns.
''I wanted to experience a different way to do things, the way you teach here, the way hospitals are set up,'' said nursing student Shatha Salem, 21, who has studied English since kindergarten.

GOVERNMENT PAYS

The program costs about $15,000 per student, and includes tuition, food, housing and transportation around Miami. The Saudi government footed the entire bill, said MDC spokeswoman Beverly Counts Williams.

Miller, who taught a few sessions, including medical ethics, to the group, said it was as much a learning experience for her as it was for the Saudi students. The students prayed five times a day, she said, and adhered to their religious beliefs with loyalty that she found surprising.

''This gave me a firsthand opportunity to really learn about a culture that is very, very different, especially for women, than anything that we experience in the U.S.,'' Miller said. ``They are a very family-centered society, and very religious people, and their day-to-day decisions are really guided by their religion.''

THE ROLE OF WOMEN

The battle of the sexes, Saudi-style, surfaced during Miami Herald interviews with the Saudi students, if only in flashes.

Yousef Saleh Ghous, 24, left his 16-year-old fiancée in Saudi Arabia to come study in Miami. Ghous, the youngest of 13 siblings, was excited about his time in the United States, although he steered clear of nightclubs and booze.

''The difference [between the United States and Saudi Arabia] is the relations between a woman and a man,'' he said, adding that men can marry up to four women in Saudi Arabia, as long as they have the means to care for each of them. ``There, it's wonderful. [Women] respect their bodies. Here, they don't cover up.''

He said he didn't see any reason for Saudi women to complain.

''The women, they live there like queens,'' he said. ``We do everything for them. Over there, we're not scared of the government, we are scared of God.''

Abdulaziz Olayam decided he didn't want his 19-year-old daughter, Somaiah Olayam, to come study in Miami alone. So he booked a flight and chaperoned the whole group for six weeks.

''For us, the most important thing is religion,'' he said. ``They have to wear head scarves and respect their religion, to be good Muslims.''

The female students said that in Saudi Arabia, women can't drive, dance in front of strangers, or date or befriend men. In Miami, they have chosen to adhere to the custom of wearing head scarves in public. Once they get back to their Brickell Avenue apartment, they explained, they let their hair down -- literally -- by removing their scarves.

SELF-RELIANCE

Salem said their trip to Miami was difficult in many ways. One observation she made about life here: Women don't seem to give as much importance to family. But she came to a conclusion as to why: Here, women often have to work to help support their families. In Saudi Arabia, any income a married woman makes is for herself. The man cares for the whole family.

In Miami, ''we have to depend on ourselves to do everything,'' Salem said. ``Over there, we have our maids to do everything for us -- shopping, cooking, cleaning, everything. We have drivers.
''I know myself better now,'' she said. ``I can see how I can depend on myself now. Maybe I can teach it to my sisters.''

Saudi Arabia: U.S. Universities Join Saudis in Partnerships

Three prominent American universities — the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University — are starting five-year partnerships, worth $25 million or more, with King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate-level research university being built in Saudi Arabia.

Under the agreements, the mechanical engineering department at Berkeley, the computer-science department and Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford, and the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas will help pick the faculty and develop the curriculum for the new university, known by the acronym Kaust, which is scheduled to open next year with a $10 billion endowment.

Over the five years, each university will receive a $10 million gift, $10 million for research on their home campus and $5 million for research at Kaust, as well as administrative costs.

“The agreement will allow us to improve our facilities here in California, and fund a stream of graduate students, without taxing our existing infrastructure,” said Albert Pisano, the chairman of Berkeley’s mechanical engineering department, which he said had voted 34 to 2 to proceed with the agreement. “We’re going to work on projects that are good for the Middle East and for California, like energy sources beyond petroleum, improved water desalination, and solar energy in the desert.”

Despite its enormous oil wealth, Saudi Arabia lacks world-class research universities. In the last few years, as the Persian Gulf nations have begun to worry about the eventual need to convert from an oil-based economy to a knowledge-based economy, they have started offering lavish inducements to American universities to bring their expertise to the region.

Although men and women will be able to mingle freely at the new university, faculty members at the American institutions said they were concerned about the possible pitfalls of working in a society where women cannot drive, gay rights do not exist and Israelis are not welcome.

The agreements do contain an exit clause. “We have a 30-day cancellation provision, allowing us to leave the agreement with no penalty if at any time we are dissatisfied,” Dr. Pisano said.
University officials said they had addressed the issues of academic and personal freedom head-on.

“We are working with a university that has guaranteed nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion or gender,” said Peter Glynn, director of the Stanford institute. “We recognize that this university operates in Saudi Arabia. Having said that, this university recognizes that if it wants to be world-class, it has to be able to freely attract the best students and faculty from around the world.”

He acknowledged that the issue could be sticky. “We have several Israeli faculty involved with this, but to be honest, there’s very little of what Stanford will be doing that will involve travel to Saudi Arabia,” he said. He added that Stanford’s main role would be devising the curriculum and recruiting initial faculty members, from around the world. “We believe this university can have a major impact in Saudi Arabia and in the region, and that’s why we’re doing this.”

Kaust has already announced partnerships with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, the Institut Français du Pétrole, the National University of Singapore, the American University of Cairo, the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and others.

-- The New York Times, By TAMAR LEWIN

Saudi Arabia: KSU Girls Prep for Dialogue Forum

RIYADH, 26 February 2008 — The King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue organized a meeting at the women’s section of King Saud University’s to pave the ground for the “Seventh National Dialogue Forum” that is scheduled to take place today.

Women from various universities, colleges and institutes exchanged their views regarding the future of job opportunities. The meeting, the fifth of its kind, reflected an outstanding level of awareness among young undergraduates and graduates as they discussed employment and related issues and laid down their expectations.

Many issues of concern were brought to the limelight. The graduates talked about the favoritism and its negative effect in the workplace. The girls talked about waiting for years to be employed although some have graduated with honors.

“The important issue is to forge cooperation between universities and the Labor Ministry to study society’s needs and accordingly start specialties that would actually have a place in the market,” said Mashael, one of the participants.

Among the demands raised by the graduates was training courses for Arabic literature graduates who are interested in entering the media and journalism field in men’s colleges.

Secretary-General of the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue Faisal bin Abdurahman bin Muammar disclosed this week that the fifth preparatory meeting would discuss a long list of themes, including work culture, labor legislations and the role of the private sector in providing job opportunities for an ever-increasing number of employment-seekers.

Al-Muammar pointed out that the dialogue would discuss ways to enable women to play a bigger role in the nation’s economic life.

Another issue addressed was promoting legal studies. Nursing graduates also raised concerns regarding low pay and long hours in this profession. The meeting brought to question the destiny of decision No. 120 made by the Ministry of Labor enabling women to work in boutiques and lingerie shops. Some of the graduates expressed their support to the decision, which was aimed at reducing unemployment among graduates by 28 percent.

- Walaa Hawari, Arab News

Middle East: U.S. Universities Rush to Set Up Outposts Abroad

By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times

When John Sexton, the president of New York University, first met Omar Saif Ghobash, an investor trying to entice him to open a branch campus in the United Arab Emirates, Mr. Sexton was not sure what to make of the proposal — so he asked for a $50 million gift.

“It’s like earnest money: if you’re a $50 million donor, I’ll take you seriously,” Mr. Sexton said. “It’s a way to test their bona fides.” In the end, the money materialized from the government of Abu Dhabi, one of the seven emirates.

Mr. Sexton has long been committed to building N.Y.U.’s international presence, increasing study-abroad sites, opening programs in Singapore, and exploring new partnerships in France.

But the plans for a comprehensive liberal-arts branch campus in the Persian Gulf, set to open in 2010, are in a class by themselves, and Mr. Sexton is already talking about the flow of professors and students he envisions between New York and Abu Dhabi.

The American system of higher education, long the envy of the world, is becoming an important export as more universities take their programs overseas.

In a kind of educational gold rush, American universities are competing to set up outposts in countries with limited higher education opportunities. American universities — not to mention Australian and British ones, which also offer instruction in English, the lingua franca of academia — are starting, or expanding, hundreds of programs and partnerships in booming markets like China, India and Singapore.

And many are now considering full-fledged foreign branch campuses, particularly in the oil-rich Middle East. Already, students in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar can attend an American university without the expense, culture shock or post-9/11 visa problems of traveling to America.

At Education City in Doha, Qatar’s capital, they can study medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, international affairs at Georgetown, computer science and business at Carnegie Mellon, fine arts at Virginia Commonwealth, engineering at Texas A&M, and soon, journalism at Northwestern.

In Dubai, another emirate, Michigan State University and Rochester Institute of Technology will offer classes this fall.

“Where universities are heading now is toward becoming global universities,” said Howard Rollins, the former director of international programs at Georgia Tech, which has degree programs in France, Singapore, Italy, South Africa and China, and plans for India. “We’ll have more and more universities competing internationally for resources, faculty and the best students.”

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, internationalization has moved high on the agenda at most universities, to prepare students for a globalized world, and to help faculty members stay up-to-date in their disciplines.

Overseas programs can help American universities raise their profile, build international relationships, attract top research talent who, in turn, may attract grants and produce patents, and gain access to a new pool of tuition-paying students, just as the number of college-age Americans is about to decline.

Even public universities, whose primary mission is to educate in-state students, are trying to establish a global brand in an era of limited state financing.

Partly, it is about prestige. American universities have long worried about their ratings in U.S. News and World Report. These days, they are also mindful of the international rankings published in Britain, by the Times Higher Education Supplement, and in China, by Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

The demand from overseas is huge. At the University of Washington, the administrator in charge of overseas programs said she received about a proposal a week. “It’s almost like spam,” said the official, Susan Jeffords, whose position as vice provost for global affairs was created just two years ago.

Traditionally, top universities built their international presence through study-abroad sites, research partnerships, faculty exchanges and joint degree programs offered with foreign universities. Yale has dozens of research collaborations with Chinese universities. Overseas branches, with the same requirements and degrees as the home campuses, are a newer — and riskier — phenomenon.

“I still think the downside is lower than the upside is high,” said Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania. “The risk is that we couldn’t deliver the same quality education that we do here, and that it would mean diluting our faculty strength at home.”

While universities with overseas branches insist that the education equals what is offered in the United States, much of the faculty is hired locally, on a short-term basis. And certainly overseas branches raise fundamental questions: Will the programs reflect American values and culture, or the host country’s? Will American taxpayers end up footing part of the bill for overseas students? What happens if relations between the United States and the host country deteriorate? And will foreign branches that spread American know-how hurt American competitiveness?

“A lot of these educators are trying to present themselves as benevolent and altruistic, when in reality, their programs are aimed at making money,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican who has criticized the rush overseas.

David J. Skorton, the president of Cornell, on the other hand, said the global drive benefited the United States. “Higher education is the most important diplomatic asset we have,” he said. “I believe these programs can actually reduce friction between countries and cultures.”

Tempering Expectations

While the Persian Gulf campus of N.Y.U. is on the horizon, George Mason University is up and running — though not at full speed — in Ras al Khaymah, another one of the emirates.

George Mason, a public university in Fairfax, Va., arrived in the gulf in 2005 with a tiny language program intended to help students achieve college-level English skills and meet the university’s admission standards for the degree programs that were beginning the next year.

George Mason expected to have 200 undergraduates in 2006, and grow from there. But it enrolled nowhere near that many, then or now. It had just 57 degree students — 3 in biology, 27 in business and 27 in engineering — at the start of this academic year, joined by a few more students and programs this semester.

The project, an hour north of Dubai’s skyscrapers and 7,000 miles from Virginia, is still finding its way. “I will freely confess that it’s all been more complicated than I expected,” said Peter Stearns, George Mason’s provost.

The Ras al Khaymah campus has had a succession of deans. Simple tasks like ordering books take months, in part because of government censors. Local licensing, still not complete, has been far more rigorous than expected. And it has not been easy to find interested students with the SAT scores and English skills that George Mason requires for admissions.

“I’m optimistic, but if you look at it as a business, you can only take losses for so long,” said Dr. Abul R. Hasan, the academic dean, who is from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. “Our goal is to have 2,000 students five years from now. What makes it difficult is that if you’re giving the George Mason degree, you cannot lower your standards.”

Aisha Ravindran, a professor from India with no previous connection to George Mason, teaches students the same communications class required for business majors at the Virginia campus — but in the Arabian desert, it lands differently.

Dr. Ravindran uses the same slides, showing emoticons and lists of nonverbal taboos to spread the American business ideal of diversity and inclusiveness. She emphasizes the need to use language that includes all listeners.

And suddenly, there is an odd mismatch between the American curriculum and the local culture.

In a country where homosexual acts are illegal, Dr. Ravindran’s slide show suggests using “partner” or “life partner,” since “husband” or “wife” might exclude some listeners. And in a country where mosques are ubiquitous, the slides counsel students to avoid the word “church” and substitute “place of worship.”

The Ras al Khaymah students include Bangladeshis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Indians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Syrians and more, most from families that can afford the $5,400-a-semester tuition. But George Mason has attracted few citizens of the emirates.

The students say they love the small classes, diversity and camaraderie. Their dorm feels much like an American fraternity house, without the haze of alcohol. Some praise George Mason’s pedagogy, which they say differs substantially from the rote learning of their high schools.

“At my local school in Abu Dhabi, it was all what the teachers told you, what was in the book,” said Mona Bar Houm, a Palestinian student who grew up in Abu Dhabi. “Here you’re asked to come up with your personal ideas.”

But what matters most, they say, is getting an American degree. “It means something if I go home to Bangladesh with an American degree,” said Abdul Mukit, a business student. “It doesn’t need to be Harvard. It’s good enough to be just an American degree.”

Whether that degree really reflects George Mason is open to question. None of the faculty members came from George Mason, although that is likely to change next year. The money is not from George Mason, either: Ras al Khaymah bears all the costs.

Nonetheless, Sharon Siverts, the vice president in charge of the campus, said: “What’s George Mason is everything we do. The admissions are done at George Mason, by George Mason standards. The degree programs are Mason programs.”

Seeking a Partnership

Three years ago, Mr. Ghobash, the Oxford-educated investor from the United Arab Emirates, heard a presentation by a private company, American Higher Education Inc., trying to broker a partnership between Kuwait and an American university.

Mr. Ghobash, wanting to bring liberal arts to his country, hired the company to submit a proposal for a gulf campus run by a well-regarded American university. American Higher Education officials said they introduced him to N.Y.U. Mr. Ghobash spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the company’s fees, talked with many N.Y.U. officials and paid for a delegation to visit the emirates before meeting Mr. Sexton, the university president, in June 2005.

Mr. Sexton said he solicited the $50 million gift to emphasize that he was not interested in a business-model deal and that academic excellence was expensive. Mr. Ghobash declined to be interviewed. But according to American Higher Education officials, $50 million was more than Mr. Ghobash could handle.

So when the agreement for the Abu Dhabi campus New York University was signed last fall, Mr. Ghobash and the company were out of the picture, and the government of Abu Dhabi — the richest of the emirates — was the partner to build and operate the N.Y.U. campus. The Executive Affairs Authority of Abu Dhabi made the gift in November 2007.

“The crown prince shares our vision of Abu Dhabi becoming an idea capital for the whole region,” Mr. Sexton said. “We’re going to be a global network university. This is central to what N.Y.U. is going to be in the future. There’s a commitment, on both sides, to have both campuses grow together, so that by 2020, both N.Y.U. and N.Y.U.-Abu Dhabi will in the world’s top 10 universities.”

Neither side will put a price tag on the plan. But both emphasize their shared ambition to create an entity central to the intellectual life not just of the Persian Gulf but also of South Asia and the Middle East.

“We totally buy into John’s view of idea capitals,” said Khaldoon al-Mubarak, chairman of the Executive Affairs Authority. “This is not a commercially driven relationship. It’s a commitment to generations to come, to research. We see eye to eye. We see this as a Catholic marriage. It’s forever.”

It is also, for New York University, a chance to grow, given Abu Dhabi’s promise to replace whatever the New York campus loses to the gulf.

“If, say, 10 percent of the physics department goes there, they will pay to expand the physics department here by 10 percent,” Mr. Sexton said. “That’s a wonderful opportunity, and we think our faculty will see it that way and step up.”

Mr. Sexton is leading the way: next fall, even before the campus is built, he plans to teach a course in Abu Dhabi, leaving New York every other Friday evening, getting to Abu Dhabi on Saturday, teaching Sunday and returning to his New York office Monday morning.

“The crown prince loved the idea and said he wanted to take the class,” Mr. Sexton said. “But I said, ‘No, think how that would be for the other students.’ ”

Uncharted Territory

While the gulf’s wealth has drawn many American universities, others dream of China’s enormous population.

In October, the New York Institute of Technology, a private university offering career-oriented training, opened a Nanjing campus in collaboration with Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and dozens of American universities offer joint or dual degrees through Chinese universities.

Kean University, a public university in New Jersey, had hoped mightily to be the first with a freestanding undergraduate campus in China. Two years ago, Kean announced its agreement to open a branch of the university in Wenzhou in September 2007. Whether the campus will materialize remains to be seen. Kean is still awaiting final approval from China, which prefers programs run through local universities.

“I’m optimistic,” said Dawood Farahi, Kean’s president. “I’m Lewis and Clark, looking for the Northwest Passage.”

In fact, his negotiations have been much like uncharted exploration. “It’s very cumbersome negotiating with the Chinese,” he said. “The deal you struck yesterday is not necessarily good today. The Chinese sign an agreement, and then the next day, you get a fax saying they want an amendment.” Still, he persists, noting, “One out of every five humans on the planet is Chinese.”

Beyond the geopolitical, there are other reasons, pedagogic and economic.

“A lot of our students are internationally illiterate,” Dr. Farahi said. “It would be very good for them to have professors who’ve taught in China, to be able to study in China, and to have more awareness of the rest of the world. And I think I can make a few bucks there.” Under the accord, he said, up to 8 percent of the Wenzhou revenues could be used to support New Jersey.

With state support for public universities a constant challenge, new financing sources are vital, especially for lesser-known universities. “It’s precisely because we’re third tier that I have to find things that jettison us out of our orbit and into something spectacular,” Dr. Farahi said.

Possibilities and Alarms

Most overseas campuses offer only a narrow slice of American higher education, most often programs in business, science, engineering and computers.

Schools of technology have the most cachet. So although the New York Institute of Technology may not be one of America’s leading universities, it is a leading globalizer, with programs in Bahrain, Jordan, Abu Dhabi, Canada, Brazil and China.

“We’re leveraging what we’ve got, which is the New York in our first name and the Technology in our last name,” said Edward Guiliano, the institute’s president. “I believe that in the 21st century, there will be a new class of truly global universities. There isn’t one yet, but we’re as close as anybody.”

Some huge universities get a toehold in the gulf with tiny programs. At a villa in Abu Dhabi, the University of Washington, a research colossus, offers short courses to citizens of the emirates, mostly women, in a government job-training program.

“We’re very eager to have a presence here,” said Marisa Nickle, who runs the program. “In the gulf, it’s not what’s here now, it’s what’s coming. Everybody’s on the way.”

Some lawmakers are wondering how that rush overseas will affect the United States. In July, the House Science and Technology subcommittee on research and science education held a hearing on university globalization.

Mr. Rohrabacher, the California lawmaker, raises alarms. “I’m someone who believes that Americans should watch out for Americans first,” he said. “It’s one thing for universities here to send professors overseas and do exchange programs, which do make sense, but it’s another thing to have us running educational programs overseas.”

The subcommittee chairman, Representative Brian Baird, a Washington Democrat, disagrees. “If the U.S. universities aren’t doing this, someone else likely will,” he said. “I think it’s better that we be invited in than that we be left out.”

Still, he said he worried that the foreign branches could undermine an important American asset — the number of world leaders who were students in the United States.

“I do wonder,” he said, “if we establish many of these campuses overseas, do we lose some of that cross-pollination?”

Kuwait: MP's life threatened for supporting co-education

KUWAIT CITY - A senior Kuwaiti liberal MP said on Wednesday that his life was threatened after he proposed amendments to two laws that enforce the segregation of the sexes at universities.

Ali Al Rashed issued a statement calling on the interior ministry to apprehend the ‘terrorist’ who threatened him in a telephone call late on Tuesday.

Kuwait’s parliament, controlled by Islamists and conservatives, passed a law in 1996 stipulating that male and female students at Kuwait University and other higher education institutions be completely separated.

It also passed another law in 2000 extending the ban on co-education to private universities.

Rashed and two other liberal MPs on Tuesday filed a bill calling for the two laws to be amended in order to allow co-education, saying that the segregation laws had a strong negative impact on students.

The three lawmakers also argued that Islamic Sharia law does not ban the mixing of the sexes because men and women can mix freely in markets, shopping malls and in workplaces.

Parliament speaker Jassem Al Khorafi strongly condemned the threat against Rashed and urged the interior ministry to try to apprehend the culprit.

The Gulf state of Kuwait is a conservative country, but unlike neighbouring Saudi Arabia it does not impose a strict dress code on women who are allowed the full freedom to drive, work and travel.

Kuwaiti women also have full political rights.

(AFP)

Saudi Arabia: US University Explores Possible Links

JEDDAH — A high-level team from the University of Colorado is in the Kingdom to explore the possibilities of collaborating, and developing joint programs, with Saudi universities. Invited by Zuhair Hamed Fayez, an alumni of the university and president of Zuhair Fayez Partnership, the Jeddah-based architectural and IT consultants, the team is led by Dr. M. Roy Wilson, chancellor of the university’s campus in Denver.

Topping the list of potential tie-ups is a plan for an architecture program leading to a bachelor’s degree in the subject at Dar Al-Hekma College for Girls (DAHC) in Jeddah. Fayez is currently chairman of the trustees of the college.

The Colorado team includes the dean of the university’s college of architecture and planning, Dr. Mark Gelernter, as well as two other members of the college. A memorandum of understanding between Colorado University and DAHC on helping establish an architecture department as well as cooperation on the existing interior design degree through a possible exchange of students may be signed soon.

At Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz University, the Colorado team discussed the possibility of collaborating with the existing faculty of environmental design. The faculty’s original curriculum was based on one developed by Harvard University.

In Riyadh, the team will visit King Saud University before flying on to the Eastern Province to investigate possibilities there.

One area in which Dr. Wilson is particularly interested in establishing collaboration is medicine. Colorado University at Denver is currently building a multibillion-dollar dedicated medical campus on a former military base in nearby Aurora. When finished, it will be one of the largest and most prestigious education, patient care and research centers in the US.

- Michel Cousins, Arab News

Kuwait: Reaction of universities to segregation law not strong

Private universities in Kuwait have not reacted strongly to the decision by Minister of Education and Higher education Nuriya Al Subaih to implement gender segregation law in private universities, starting from Sunday.

The administrative departments at the universities were talking to the Arab Times Monday a day after the law came into effect. The student’s administration department at Gulf University (GUST) said the university is already adhering to the law.

"All the classes in the university are unisex, with different classrooms for boys and girls. GUST has always followed the gender segregation laws in Kuwait." The university is moving to a new bigger campus in Mishref shortly, where again the segregation law will be fully in place, the officer at the department added.

The general information department at American University of Kuwait (AUK) said "we are already gender segregated. However, we hold co-education classes depending on the number of sessions and the availability of faculty for certain subjects."

When asked if the decision to implement the segregation law in private universities will bring about any change in the university, the official said it would be decided by the university management after due deliberations. Australian University of Kuwait (ACK) is also mostly gender segregated, except for classes in some majors, opted by large number of students and requiring more teaching sessions, the students administration department said.

"It’s too early to comment about the changes that will be implemented in the university following the ministerial decision to implement the segregation law."

- Arab Times

Saudi Arabia: Students Welcome Decision on Unions

The Shoura Council has passed a new University Law that allows the formation of student unions at Saudi universities. The unions will have a representative on the university council, the law said. The members of the unions will be elected by secret ballot and can serve for more than one term. Financing will be from the university budget, donations, gifts and revenue from their activities.

University students and teachers have welcomed the decision to form student unions and said it would improve educational standard and create a healthy environment on campuses. “It’s a very important decision,” said Dr. Abdul Ilah Saaty, vice dean of the Community College at King Abdulaziz University (KAU). “The union will help students raise their voice and express their wishes.” Saaty proposed election of a member from each college to the student union in order to have proper representation.

Abdullah Abdul Jawad, a university student, was excited hearing the news and said the unions would make Saudi campuses more lively and engaging.

Malekah Bakash, a KAU home economics student, commended the Shoura decision and said it would have great impact on student life in campuses. “It will enable students to participate in extracurricular activities in order to show off their skills and capabilities,” she added.
The promotion of dialogue between students and teachers is another major point in favor of student unions. “The unions will break down the barriers between students and faculty members,” Saaty said. He also urged authorities to make student unions an important body at universities to allow students to participate in the decision-making process.

Dr. Hassan Felemban, vice dean of KAU’s Faculty of Science for development, commended the new law passed by the Shoura which will give students a pivotal role in the university system. “The proposed student unions will help in developing responsible students.”

Felemban said unions would also provide a good place for students to achieve practical experience before entering the job market, especially in the area of taking up responsibilities with efficiency.

Professor Muhammad Ismail Abdussalam at KAU’s College of Engineering, described the move to establish student unions as a progressive decision, adding that it would stimulate educational development. “Unions will also help us stay aware of the quality and impact of our educational products and make continuous assessment, keeping in view student views and demands.”

- Arab News

Saudi Arabia: Reforms in Higher Education Raise Questions

In a lavish ceremony in November in the remote port town of Thuwal, a three-hour drive from Mecca, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia laid the cornerstone for a new Western-style science and technology university. "Based on Islam's eternal values, which urge us to seek knowledge and develop ourselves and our societies, and relying on God Almighty, we declare the establishment of King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and hope it will be a source of knowledge and serve as a bridge between people and cultures," he told the crowd of over 1,500 national and foreign dignitaries. Observers, however, are skeptical about the viability of such new institutions.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is at the forefront of Saudi Arabia's new efforts to reform an antiquated higher education system. The country’s Ministry of Higher Education—established in 1975—has been mainly controlled by the Wahhabi elite, who emphasize religious instruction over liberal arts or sciences. As recently as 2003, Saudi Arabia had only eight universities for a population of over 22 million people—75 percent of them under 30—and spent less than a quarter of one percent of its GDP on research, as opposed to 10 percent spent on the military.

Under the leadership of reform-minded King Abdullah, the country has begun a massive overhaul of its higher education system. The Ministry of Higher Education has opened more than 100 new universities and colleges in the past four years, funded by a $15-billion budget, which has tripled since 2004. KAUST's $10-billion endowment makes it the sixth richest university in the world before even opening its doors. King Saud University, the nation's largest, recently announced the hiring of twenty-four Nobel laureates. The government has also lifted its ban on private universities, and will be providing $10-million toward scholarships and building costs for the half-dozen private institutions already in the works.

As a personal project of the King—and under the aegis of the relatively secular Saudi oil company Aramco rather than the Ministry—KAUST will push social boundaries by becoming the Kingdom’s first co-educational university. Some of the new private universities are hoping to follow in its path. Among KAUST's advisors are high-ranking administrators from Cornell University, Imperial College of London, and the National Academy of Sciences. Private universities have already teamed up with consultants from Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Cambridge.

Education reform is also part of a set of broader efforts to diversify the Saudi economy and “Saudify” the Kingdom's companies, a strategy to address the staggering youth unemployment rate of 30 percent. In turn, most of the reforms are directed toward the sciences, high-tech, and other lucrative fields. "We've tailored most of out new programs—I'd say close to 80 percent of them—to the labor market needs," says Mohammed al-Ohali, deputy minister of higher education. Many university administrators also admit that focusing on the sciences—rather than politics, literature or history—will help them escape the scorn of the Saudi religious elite.

One of the primary challenges facing these new universities will be attracting Western faculty to a country known for its severe social restrictions, such as the ban on alcohol, most public entertainment, and women’s driving as well as restrictions on women's dress. To overcome these challenges, KAUST is planning on spending $100-million a year on international research grants and academic prizes, and will shoulder the costs of jointly hiring professors at foreign universities who will split their time between the partners. The university also hopes to create a steady pipeline of graduate students by funding 250 undergraduates every year to complete their studies abroad in exchange for commitments to enroll in KAUST as graduate students.

But critics both inside and outside the Kingdom are skeptical that these new universities, even with Western faculty and Western-designed curricula, will be able to flourish in the restrictive Saudi environment. "It's not only about buildings and labs and big names and throwing money at everything," says Khalid al-Dakhil, a former professor at King Saud University who was forced to retire early because of his controversial research about Saudi history. "If you want to build a Western-style university in Saudi Arabia, you have to remember that these institutions prospered because of the freedom of those societies. You have to be comfortable asking questions."

Even the special status accorded to KAUST by the King's sponsorship may not be enough to protect it from adversarial forces in Saudi society. Hassan al-Husseini, a former administrator at the King Fahad University of Petroleum and Minerals, which was Saudi Aramco's first attempt at starting a Western-style university, cautions that "when something is established by royal edict, then that same thing can be reversed by another royal edict. It's not like you have legal protection for such things in Saudi Arabia."

- Zvika Krieger, a special correspondent for Newsweek and Middle East correspondent for the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Saudi Arabia: Reforms in higher education raise questions.

The King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) is at the forefront of Saudi Arabia's new efforts to reform an antiquated higher education system.

The country’s Ministry of Higher Education—established in 1975—has been mainly controlled by the Wahhabi elite, who emphasize religious instruction over liberal arts or sciences. Under the leadership of reform-minded King Abdullah, the country has begun a massive overhaul of its higher education system.

The Ministry of Higher Education has opened more than 100 new universities and colleges in the past four years, funded by a $15-billion budget, which has tripled since 2004.

KAUST's $10-billion endowment makes it the sixth richest university in the world before even opening its doors. King Saud University, the nation's largest, recently announced the hiring of twenty-four Nobel laureates.

The government has also lifted its ban on private universities, and will be providing $10-million toward scholarships and building costs for the half-dozen private institutions already in the works.

(Arab Reform Bulletin, December)

Saudi Arabia: King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert

Oct 26, 2007
New York Times, A1
THANASSIS CAMBANIS

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia, Oct. 25 - On a marshy peninsula 50 miles from this Red Sea port, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is staking $12.5 billion on a gargantuan bid to catch up with the West in science and technology.

Between an oil refinery and the sea, the monarch is building from scratch a graduate research institution that will have one of the 10 largest endowments in the world, worth more than $10 billion.

Its planners say men and women will study side by side in an enclave walled off from the rest of Saudi society, the country's notorious religious police will be barred and all religious and ethnic groups will be welcome in a push for academic freedom and international collaboration sure to test the kingdom's cultural and religious limits.

This undertaking is directly at odds with the kingdom's religious establishment, which severely limits women's rights and rejects coeducation and robust liberal inquiry as unthinkable.
For the new institution, the king has cut his own education ministry out the loop, hiring the state-owned oil giant Saudi Aramco to build the campus, create its curriculum and attract foreigners.

Supporters of what is to be called the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or Kaust, wonder whether the king is simply building another gated island to be dominated by foreigners, like the compounds for oil industry workers that have existed here for decades, or creating an institution that will have a real impact on Saudi society and the rest of the Arab world.

"There are two Saudi Arabias," said Jamal Khashoggi, the editor of Al Watan, a newspaper. "The question is which Saudi Arabia will take over."

The king has broken taboos, declaring that the Arabs have fallen critically behind much of the modern world in intellectual achievement and that his country depends too much on oil and not enough on creating wealth through innovation.

"There is a deep knowledge gap separating the Arab and Islamic nations from the process and progress of contemporary global civilization," said Abdallah S. Jumah, the chief executive of Saudi Aramco. "We are no longer keeping pace with the advances of our era."

Traditional Saudi practice is on display at the biggest public universities, where the Islamic authorities vet the curriculum, medical researchers tread carefully around controversial subjects like evolution, and female and male students enter classrooms through separate doors and follow lectures while separated by partitions.

Old-fashioned values even seeped into the carefully staged groundbreaking ceremony on Sunday for King Abdullah's new university, at which organizers distributed an issue of the magazine The Economist with a special advertisement for the university wrapped around the cover. State censors had physically torn from each copy an article about Saudi legal reform titled "Law of God Versus Law of Man," leaving a jagged edge.

Despite the obstacles, the king intends to make the university a showcase for modernization. The festive groundbreaking and accompanying symposium about the future of the modern university were devised partly as a recruiting tool for international academics.

"Getting the faculty will be the biggest challenge," said Ahmed F. Ghoniem, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is consulting for the new university. "That will make it or break it." Professor Ghoniem has advised the new university to lure international academics with laboratory facilities and grants they cannot find at home, but he also believes that established professors will be reluctant to leave their universities for a small enclave in the desert.

"You have to create an environment where you can connect to the outside world," said Professor Ghoniem, who is from Egypt. "You cannot work in isolation."

He admitted that even though he admired the idea of the new university, he would be unlikely to abandon his post at M.I.T. to move to Saudi Arabia.

Festivities at the construction site on Sunday for 1,500 dignitaries included a laser light show and a mockup of the planned campus that filled an entire room. The king laid a crystal cornerstone into a stainless steel shaft on wheels.

Cranes tore out mangroves and pounded the swampland with 20-ton blocks into a surface firm enough to build the campus on. Inside a tent, the king, his honor guard wearing flowing robes and curved daggers, and an array of Aramco officials in suits took to a shiny stage lighted with green and blue neon tubing, like an MTV awards show. Mist from dry ice shrouded the stage, music blared in surround sound, and holographic projections served as a backdrop to some of the speeches.

From a laconic monarch known for his austerity, the pomp, along with a rare speech by the king himself, was intended to send a strong signal, according to the team charged with building and staffing the new campus within two years.

The king is lavishing the institution not only with money, but also with his full political endorsement, intended to stave off internal challenges from conservatives and to win over foreign scholars who doubt that academic freedom can thrive here.

The new project is giving hope to Saudi scholars who until the king's push to reform education in the last few years have endured stagnant research budgets and continue to face extensive government red tape.

"Because Aramco is founding the university, I believe it will have freedom," said Abdulmalik A. Aljinaidi, dean of the research and consultation institute at King Abdulaziz University, Jidda's biggest, with more than 40,000 students. "For Kaust to succeed, it will have to be free of all the restrictions and bureaucracy we face as a public university."

Even in the most advanced genetics labs at King Abdulaziz, the women wear full face coverings, and female students can meet with male advisers only in carefully controlled public free zones like the library. Scientists there tread carefully when they do research in genetics, stem cells or evolution, for fear of offending Islamic social mores.

Even in Jidda, the kingdom's most liberal city, a status rooted in its history as a trading outpost, change comes slowly. This month the governor allowed families to celebrate the post-Ramadan Id al-Fitr holiday in public, effectively allowing men and women to socialize publicly on the same streets for the first time.

The religious police were accused of beating a man to death because he was suspected of selling alcohol. Conservatives have fended off efforts by women to secure the right to drive or to run for office, although women have made considerable gains in access to segregated education and workplaces.

Against this backdrop, said Mr. Khashoggi, the newspaper editor, the king has conceived of the new university as a liberalizing counterweight, whose success depends on how much it engages the rest of Saudi society. "Nobody wants to live in a ghetto, even a nice one," Mr. Khashoggi said. "As a Saudi, I say, let's open up."

Upon completion, the energy-efficient campus will house 20,000 faculty and staff members, students and their families. Social rules will be more relaxed, as they are in the compounds where foreign oil workers live; women will be allowed to drive, for example. But the kingdom?s laws will still apply: Israelis, barred by law from visiting Saudi Arabia, will not be able to collaborate with the university. And one staple of campus life worldwide will be missing: alcohol.
The university president will be a foreigner, and the faculty members and graduate students at first will be overwhelmingly foreign as well. Generous scholarships will finance the 2,000 graduate students; planners expect the Saudi share of the student body to increase over the years as scholarships aimed at promising current undergraduates help groom them for graduate studies at the new university.

The university's entire model is built around partnerships with other international universities, and faculty members are expected to have permanent bases at other research institutions abroad.

The university will also rely on a new free-market model. The faculty members will not have tenure, and almost all of them will have joint appointments. While the university will initially be awash in money, its faculty and graduate students will still have to compete with top international institutions for the limited pool of private money that underwrites most graduate research.

Suhair el-Qurashi, dean of the private all-female Dar Al Hekma College, often attacked as 'bad' and 'liberal,' said a vigorous example of free-thinking at the university would embolden the many Saudis who back the king's quest to reform long-stagnant higher education.

"The king knows he will face some backlash and bad publicity," Ms. Qurashi said. "I think the system is moving in the right direction."

Algeria: A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.

Women make up 70 percent of Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.

In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.

Although men still hold all of the formal levers of power and women still make up only 20 percent of the work force, that is more than twice their share a generation ago, and they seem to be taking over the machinery of state as well.

“If such a trend continues,” said Daho Djerbal, editor and publisher of Naqd, a magazine of social criticism and analysis, “we will see a new phenomenon where our public administration will also be controlled by women.”

The change seems to have sneaked up on Algerians, who for years have focused more on the struggle between a governing party trying to stay in power and Islamists trying to take that power.

Those who study the region say they are taken aback by the data but suggest that an explanation may lie in the educational system and the labor market.

University studies are no longer viewed as a credible route toward a career or economic well-being, and so men may well opt out and try to find work or to simply leave the country, suggested Hugh Roberts, a historian and the North Africa project director of the International Crisis Group.

But for women, he added, university studies get them out of the house and allow them to position themselves better in society. “The dividend may be social rather than in terms of career,” he said.

This generation of Algerian women has navigated a path between the secular state and the pull of extremist Islam, the two poles of the national crisis of recent years.

The women are more religious than previous generations, and more modern, sociologists here said. Women cover their heads and drape their bodies with traditional Islamic coverings. They pray. They go to the mosque — and they work, often alongside men, once considered taboo.

Sociologists and many working women say that by adopting religion and wearing the Islamic head covering called the hijab, women here have in effect freed themselves from moral judgments and restrictions imposed by men. Uncovered women are rarely seen on the street late at night, but covered women can be seen strolling the city after attending the evening prayer at a mosque.

“They never criticize me, especially when they see I am wearing the hijab,” said Denni Fatiha, 44, the first woman to drive a large city bus through the narrow, winding roads of Algiers.
The impact has been far-reaching and profound.

In some neighborhoods, for example, birthrates appear to have fallen and class sizes in elementary schools have dropped by nearly half. It appears that women are delaying marriage to complete their studies, though delayed marriage is also a function of high unemployment. In the past, women typically married at 17 or 18 but now marry on average at 29, sociologists said.
And when they marry, it is often to men who are far less educated, creating an awkward social reality for many women.

Khalida Rahman is a lawyer. She is 33 and has been married to a night watchman for five months. Her husband was a friend of her brothers who showed up one day and proposed. She immediately said yes, she recalled.

She describes her life now this way: “Whenever I leave him it is just as if I am a man. But when I get home I become a woman.”

Fatima Oussedik, a sociologist, said, “We in the ’60s, we were progressive, but we did not achieve what is being achieved by this generation today.” Ms. Oussedik, who works for the Research Center for Applied Economics and Development in Algiers, does not wear the hijab and prefers to speak in French.

Researchers here say the change is not driven by demographics; women make up only a bit more than half of the population. They said it is driven by desire and opportunity.

Algeria’s young men reject school and try to earn money as traders in the informal sector, selling goods on the street, or they focus their efforts on leaving the country or just hanging out. There is a whole class of young men referred to as hittistes — the word is a combination of French and Arabic for people who hold up walls.

Increasingly, the people here have lost faith in their government, which draws its legitimacy from a revolution now more than five decades old, many political and social analysts said. In recent parliamentary elections, turnout was low and there were 970,000 protest votes — cast by people who intentionally destroyed their ballots — nearly as many as the 1.3 million votes cast in support of the governing party.

There are regular protests, and riots, all over the country, with people complaining about corruption, lack of services and economic disparities. There are violent attacks, too: bombings aimed at the police, officials and foreigners. A triple suicide bombing on April 11 against the prime minister’s office and the police left more than 30 people dead.

In that context, women may have emerged as Algeria’s most potent force for social change, with their presence in the bureaucracy and on the street having a potentially moderating and modernizing influence on society, sociologists said.

“Women, and the women’s movement, could be leading us to modernity,” said Abdel Nasser Djabi, a professor of sociology at the University of Algiers.

Not everyone is happy with those dynamics. Some political and social analysts say the recent resurgence in radical Islamist activity, including bombings, is driven partly by a desire to slow the social change the country is experiencing, especially regarding women’s role in society.
Others complain that the growing participation of women in society is a direct violation of the faith.

“I am against this,” said Esmail Ben Ibrahim, an imam at a neighborhood mosque near the center of the city. “It is all wrong from a religious point of view. Society has embarked on the wrong path.”

The quest for identity is a constant undercurrent in much of the Middle East. But it is arguably the most complicated question in Algeria, a nation whose borders were drawn by France and whose people speak Berber, Arabic and French.

After a bitter experience with French occupation and a seven-year revolutionary war that brought independence in 1962 at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, the leaders here chose to adopt Islam and Arab identity as the force to unify the country. Arabic replaced French as the language of education, and the French secular curriculum was replaced with a curriculum heavy on religion.

At the same time, girls were encouraged to go to school.

Now, more than four decades later, Algeria’s youth — 70 percent of the population is under 30, researchers said — have grown up with Arabic and an orientation toward Middle Eastern issues. Arabic-language television networks like Al Jazeera have become the popular reference point, more so than French television, observers here said.

In the 1990s radical Islamist ideas gained popular support, and terrorism was widely accepted as a means to win power. More than 100,000 people died in years of civil conflict. Today most people say the experience has forced them to reject the most radical ideas. So although Algerians are more religious now than they were during the bloody 1990s, they are more likely to embrace modernity — a partial explanation for the emergence of women as a societal force, some analysts said.

That is not the case in more rural mountainous areas, where women continue to live by the code of tradition. But for the time being, most people say that for now the community’s collective consciousness is simply too raw from the years of civil war for Islamist terrorists or radical Islamic ideas to gain popular support.

There is a sense that the new room given to women may at least partly be a reflection of that general feeling. The population has largely rejected the most radical interpretation of Islam and has begun to return to the more North African, almost mystical, interpretation of the faith, sociologists and religious leaders said.
Whatever the underlying reason, women in the streets of the city are brimming with enthusiasm.

“I don’t think any of this contradicts Islam,” said Wahiba Nabti, 36, as she walked through the center of the city one day recently. “On the contrary, Islam gives freedom to work. Anyway, it is between you and God.”

Ms. Nabti wore a black scarf covering her head and a long black gown that hid the shape of her body. “I hope one day I can drive a crane, so I can really be financially independent,” she said. “You cannot always rely on a man.”