REGIONAL UNIVERSITIES

Al Baha University and Al Jouf University are at the forefront of higher education in Saudi Arabia, expanding their roles in research across technical fields and the humanities.

What role does your school play in the Saudi education sector?

Rashad Kashgari

DEAN, IBN SINA MEDICAL COLLEGE

Dr. Hatem Bugshan

CEO, EDUCATION E-SOLUTIONS

Can you walk us through the evolution of the Future Institute of Higher Education and Training since it was founded?

Since its foundation in 1991, this institute has constantly played a crucial role in empowering young Saudis, constantly expanding in terms of geographical presence, clients’ profile, courses offering and accreditations. Our dual goal is to increase the employment rate among skilled Saudis and ensure a higher rate of competent and qualified Saudis enter the workforce. In order to achieve these objectives, the institute had to undergo a constant process of innovation to adapt to a dynamic, changing business environment, especially since the announcement of Vision 2030. The changes and progress within the organization are clear. From being a center, it became an institute offering recognized diplomas; from offering courses just in Jeddah, we are now present in other cities such as Riyadh and Medina; from training only women, it now trains both female and male workers; from being known for its training in creative development, it now offers courses in over 65 different areas; and from being mainly focused on B2C channels, it is establishing a more thorough B2B avenue that offers over 50 programs for companies within different sectors can benefit from. The institute never stopped advancing and improving to raise the standards of the broader education segment of the country.

What helped the institute to remain active and adjust to the rapid changes in the education and work environment?

Over its 28-year history, the Future Institute has become so much more than an education facility, developing into a vital tool for helping women enter a wide range of the country’s workforce. We have pioneered courses for women in a range of areas, recognizing and forecasting areas in which women would soon be permitted to work. This foresight has enabled Future to grow into the market leader for educating women.

For our B2C segment, we have a benchmark that serves as a general standard, but we work with people in a hands-on way in order to ensure their personal development. At times, different candidates need different instructions based on what you are trying to teach and depending on their learning styles. Our main body of students are working professionals or entrepreneurs, but we do have some university students who come here to complement their knowledge, so clearly there has to be a specialized approach to each one of them. With regard to our B2B channel, we work closely with companies to understand what exactly their employees need to have learned at the end of the course.

Looking at the medium term, what are your strategic priorities, and how do you seek to achieve them?

Our strategy remains focused on expanding regardless of the status of the economy. The country will always need qualified workforce, and our duty is to maintain a constant supply of skilled candidates. As such, we are trying to break into the B2G training space, an area traditionally difficult to gain a foothold in. I have worked with the Ministry of Education in the past, but even if you have developed a relationship with various ministries, there is a tendency in the government to hire people from abroad. This is an pattern that we would like to change, since there is a great deal of potential in our local training firms. We need to see the government tap into these local resources more. On the industry side, hospitality is an area we are interested in, because of its size and growth projections. As such, we are planning to add professional hospitality training to our offerings. ✖

Wafa Al-Rushaid

CEO, RAFFLES DESIGN INSTITUTE

We sit halfway between universities and the other colleges because we are the only college that solely provides higher education. In some ways, we resemble a small university. Previously, we were known as the Technical Trainers College (TTC) primarily training teachers for vocational training. Now, as AEC, we provide bachelor degrees in engineering in ICT, mechanical engineering, and electrical engineering. The goal is to help young Saudis become engineers or technical managers.

KEN HAWICK

We teach intensive programs in cybersecurity, a field which is bound to witness important growth because of the huge demand in the market, especially following the 2012 cyber attacks on Saudi Aramco. It is difficult

AHMAD SHOWAIL

to retain employees in the cybersecurity field because they are always getting offers and jumping from one place to another. The Ministry of Defense and some companies give students job offers before they have even graduated. Our program seeks to involve students with IT and basic computer skills in the first two years. Then, in the next two years, we provide them with hands-on experiences in cybersecurity, teaching them how to be ethical hackers. It is expertise that many companies now are looking for. To be a great defender, you have to know how an attacker thinks. That is exactly the mentality we want to instill in our students. Anything online is hackable, but what we do as cybersecurity professionals is make the hacker’s job harder. It can be a two-hour job or a two-year job, and it depends on your defenses and countermeasures, as well as the precautions you take. No matter what you do,