UAE UNIVERSITIES TO GET STAR RATINGS IN BID TO BOOST QUALITY OF EDUCATION
▶ Ministry wants to give parents and students more information than institutions reveal about themselves
The Ministry of Education will soon issue star ratings to all licensed colleges and universities as part of the National Higher Education Strategy 2030.
The star-rating system is one of four initiatives of the national strategy approved by the Cabinet this week to raise the quality of post-secondary education and research.
“The strategy is made up of four pillars – quality, relevance, innovation and efficiency,” Ahmad Al Falasi, Minister of State for Higher Education, said yesterday.
“Together, the pillars will help to build a generation that is productive and equipped with the knowledge and skillset to contribute to the development of a knowledge-based economy.”
A pilot version of the star-rating system will be tested in selected universities early next year, and is expected to be introduced in all private and public tertiary institutions in the third quarter.
Institutions will be judged on the quality of their teaching and reputation, and the quality, quantity and effects of their research.
Much of the data used for the ratings will come from existing reports that universities and colleges are required to complete and submit to the ministry twice a year.
Added to these will be surveys that the ministry plans to issue to students and employers, and possibly inspections.
Each university will be issued a quality-assurance report by the ministry, detailing strengths and weaknesses. The reports will be available to the public.
“This will be useful in many ways – for example, informing the parents and students what the levels of this institution are so that they can make an informed decision on where to go,” said Mohammed Al Mualla, an undersecretary at the Ministry of Education.
“Currently what is available is just what the institutions say about themselves, so everybody is claiming, ‘OK, I’m the top in this or that’. So that at least will provide some transparency for the community.
There are various approaches in the world in terms of doing the classifications. Some of them are based mainly on metrics – self-reported – plus maybe some independent verification.
“Obviously you have to verify what is self-reported. But also some other systems in the world, they do these sort of peer visits and so on. We are looking at various models.”
Mr Al Mualla said the ministry was studying the Research Assessment Exercise in the UK, which measures the quality of research from British universities. Colleges and universities that are found to be failing to deliver on academic and business promises may face penalties ranging from warnings to suspension of admissions, depending on the severity.
The ministry has set a goal of tripling the number of PhD candidates to increase the quantity and calibre of academic research produced here.
Of the 139,559 students studying in the country’s 74 institutions, 12,837 are graduate students. Of those, 840 are pursuing a PhD.
“The issue we have now is that although there is research conducted in universities, the impact of that research and the level of that research is not what we hope it to be,” Mr Al Mualla said.
“We are launching this initiative to triple the number of PhD students so that we provide those tools for the academic staff to produce more effective research.”
The national strategy will for the first time analyse historical data compiled by the ministry to look for links between the country’s public K-12 school system and higher education.
The analysis is also aimed at reducing the drop-out rate at universities and colleges.
“Globally, the drop-out rate is from 4 to 10 per cent. In the UAE, in the federal institutions, it’s about 14 per cent,” Mr Al Falasi said.
“We don’t have a huge dropout rate in higher education, but it is higher than average. What we would like now is to try and understand why that is happening.”
The fourth initiative announced by Mr Al Falasi involves creating a “higher education and private sector council” to engage private companies in academia.
“They can be simply be a sounding board where they can give us feedback on our students, our graduates and our programmes, and they can also tell us what’s happening in their own sector, what’s expected and how can they help us to develop the programme,” he said.
“The second element is they can actually participate.
“They can participate by simply offering internships in the private sector, or they can participate with funding research, for example.”
More details about the quality assurance star rating system will be announced by the ministry next year.
Dean Hoke, co-founder of Edu Alliance, an Abu Dhabi and US higher education consultancy company, said the initiative was “a positive step forward”.
“It should assist parents and students to make informed decisions for undergraduate and graduate programmes,” Mr Hoke said.
We don’t have a huge drop-out rate in higher education, but it is higher than average [and we want to understand why] AHMAD AL FALASI Minister of State for Higher Education