AHEAD of its time
IAU’s forward-looking mindset can be gauged from the importance it places on transforming all its domains in line with the fourth industrial revolution.
Where do you position IAU within the higher education landscape of Saudi Arabia?
IAU was established as a separate university in 2009 and was previously a campus of KFU. IAU has four major clusters of interest: health sciences, engineering and technology, computer and business administration, and humanities. Health sciences and architecture are two of our main specializations. Under each of these clusters is a number of colleges, so the cluster of health sciences, for example, has eight colleges. Under each college are several programs, some of which are unique in the sense that no other university in Saudi Arabia offers them. Our college of applied medical sciences offers a specialization in cardiac technology, and ours is the only department that graduates Saudi female students specialized in this area. We are also the only Saudi university where female students specialize in neuroscience.
What is your vision of the computer sciences cluster, and how are you preparing graduates for the jobs of the future?
In general, transformation is a must for all higher education systems. In Saudi Arabia, universities are the primary need. This is not only because of globalization, but also because of the advancements in communication and technology, the big drivers of change. With Vision 2030, the current leadership aims to diversify the Saudi economy, and the completion of all the strategic objectives under Vision 2030 depend an intellectual human capital. This means changes have to take place across all domains of universities, such as academic, research, community service, and innovation and entrepreneurship. Equally important, changes have to be made across all components of the education system, such as admission, accessibility, teaching strategies, the curriculum, and assessment and evaluation. We are living in the digital revolution and are coming ever so close to the fourth industrial revolution. AI, IT, machine learning, and other changes will reshape the future of the workforce. Therefore, we need graduates capable of facing future challenges. One of the issues university graduates face is lifelong learning because in the future, a worker may change jobs three or four times throughout their career. We need to keep this in consideration moving forward.
Do your enrolment figures reflect the trend of high female enrolment across the country?
Our university is rather unique, as 70% of our students are female. In the past, female education was under a different unit but we took the decision to merge male and female higher education. Some universities looked at this as a burden, though we realized it was a positive push for us. Throughout our history, we have had many capable and committed Saudi female faculty members, and some of our achievements in terms of international accreditation are due to their hard work. Also, 70% of our faculty members are female, so women are well represented in our boards and administration. We have female deans and vice deans and a female vice rector. They share all decision-making and strategic planning duties; women are integral members of our community.
The total number of students in the university is currently around 35,000. Health sciences constitutes a large part of the structure of the university and we currently seek to complete a new hospital that we plan to operate soon. This will be a part of a biomedical valley in the future which will include the hospital, a research center, a family community center, and pharmaceutical and biomedical engineering companies. We have almost 850,000sqm of land where the new hospital is being built, and we will turn this land into a medical city in the future. Already, we have finished the hospital, research center, and building for community medicine, and at present, we are constructing the neuroscience building. Next, we will build a biomedical park where we can perform and apply research in collaboration with companies. ✖
How would you position your university in the academic landscape of the Kingdom in terms of faculty?
PSU will emphasize its strengths and focus on graduate employability, the quality of its faculty, the degree programs we offer, recruitment of talented and diverse students, and focus on graduating young men and women who land good jobs. In brief, PSU is focused on graduating employable young professional for rewarding careers in their fields. They will also be informed citizens. These graduates and our programs play a vital role in the ongoing implementation of Vision 2030. As for the PSU faculty, the university is proud of the diversity and strengths of its national and international faculty. In the run up to laying down the themes and goals in 2016 for PSU’s 2018-2023 strategic plan, faculty members knew they had to increase the quality and frequency of scholarly publications, as well as participate in more conferences.
What is your vision for preparing students for the jobs of the future in the digital economy?
The final course bachelor’s students take is the cooperative program. It is a rigorous, seven-month-long, hands-on training program held at leading firms, local and international, in the Kingdom. It is meant to narrow the gap between what students learn in the classroom on their path to the workplace. It is difficult to see how things will play out because of digital technology. As for the digital economy, that will reduce or eliminate jobs in many traditional places of work, including shopping malls, banks, offices, and increase inequality. So what are the jobs of the future? Will those jobs pay living wages to cover the costs of owning a home and having a family in a future where healthcare, social security, and education are privatized? These are questions that going digital, on its own, does not address.
What is your vision for the use of technology in academia?
Big consulting firms say that remote learning will become a bigger trend, but we do not see it, and there are plenty of examples of failure. Student and faculty engagement, along with in-person conversations and projects, are what make a successful education. Huddling in a dark room with a headset on is not the way to go. The human touch and human interactions are the quintessential ingredients to a quality education. That being said, PSU has and will continue to explore, critique, and make decisions on how to best utilize blended learning or pass on certain types of tech.
What is your agenda in terms of the internationalization of staff, students, and programs?
PSU has a number of formal and informal agreements with distinguished schools. The university offers a range of study abroad opportunities for a year, a term, or as an intensive summer school course. On another front, each year there are two-week cultural-immersion summer programs, each in a different country. A week or longer is spent with one or more hosting universities with the balance spent exploring the countryside and metro areas, interacting and learning the culture from locals. PSU
Model United Nations and Moot Court teams on both campuses go abroad to compete. PSU also runs a number of imported skills building programs such as the intensive soft skills Fullbridge boot camp program for graduating students, ABA ROLI legal training programs for students and the Law College faculty, and British Higher Education Academy training for PSU faculty.
What are your strategic priorities and primary ambitions for the years ahead?
As the first private university in the country, the university rose to the challenge in 1999 and will continue to pioneer and champion private higher education. PSU has headed into its third decade in higher education with confidence. In April 2018, the university was awarded a seven-year NCAAA Institutional academic accreditation. This is the third time we have won this accreditation. Our strategic priorities and primary ambitions for the years ahead are to stand out as a model of excellence in private higher education. ✖