There’s little doubt that the future will bring radical changes to learning, teaching and funding models in higher education. The fact is, the way degree programs are delivered and consumed needs to be changed to cope with rising student numbers and the changing needs of employers. UN figures show that global enrolment in further education more than doubled between 2000 and 2022, with a current figure around the 260 million mark. Consumer demand is likely to rise further as populations grow and degree programmes become ever more accessible to broader sections of national demographics.
The world is changing fast, and employers’ needs are evolving even more quickly as we enter a new phase of runaway tech development in the form of frontier AI. To keep up, funding and business models for further education will require a radical rethink about how to deliver degree programmes against the backdrop of intense global competition for the world’s brightest and smartest young minds.
Shifts in consumer expectations will also dramatically affect how colleges and universities market their courses and brand themselves. Technology is equally likely to profoundly affect what students learn in the future, how they study, and what employers expect of a graduate.
The one constant is the value higher education adds to people’s lives: enhanced employment opportunities, increased social mobility across social and socio-economic sectors, a learning-for-life mindset, and a natural intellectual curiosity that is the bedrock of academic research and innovation. In short, it’s hard to argue against the positive benefits of higher education. And, as if to back that up, the UN’s figures show demand for university degree programmes more than outstripping population growth over the same period – while the global population has grown by around 28% over the last two decades, demand for further education has increased by a staggering 155%.
Further education and the Middle East
When we think of the Middle East region, either as residents or business travellers, we tend to think of fast-growing, forward-looking, vibrant and dynamic oases in which regional governments outline defined plans for their citizens’ collective good, as they diversify economies away from hydrocarbons while delivering prosperity and growth. I’m thinking here of strategic plans among Gulf states such as Dubai’s Vision 2030, Abu Dhabi’s Economic Vision 2030 or Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 and Vision 2040. But people rarely associate the region with the high-quality further education for which, in certain circles, it’s increasingly becoming renowned.
Demand for further education in the region is strong – 60% of MENA’s combined population of around 400 million are under the age of 24 – and the GCC and wider MENA region, once net exporters of students, are beginning to reverse that trend and import more overseas students from outside the MENA region than ever before. World-class academic institutions and new private universities such as KSA’s King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (founded in 2009) and Abu Dhabi University (2003) regularly feature in the top ten of The Times Higher Education Arab University Rankings.
Investment in higher education
In my view, this situation is partly the result of a significant increase in government and private investment in the further education sector in the Middle East, with increasing numbers of universities and vocational training institutions appearing in the sector offering degree courses to students from across the world. This might go some way to explaining why, in places like Dubai and Doha, international students outnumber local students. And the sector in the GCC has a very promising pipeline from GCC residents and long-term expats. The GCC private K-12 education market – in other words, private education from kindergarten up to 12th grade – is estimated to be worth USD 15.5 billion and is set to increase by over 7% each year between 2023 and 2028. In short, there is an ever-growing pipeline of demand for degree programmes once those pupils reach the age at which they typically choose a degree course.
Technology’s place in higher education
Another reason I believe there’s a bright future for further education globally is that, if the Middle East is anything to go by, technology has been put at the heart of education, how it’s delivered and administered, and the overall student experience. The UAE hosts around 200 ed-tech companies, and these are pioneering innovative digital e-learning platforms and investing in infrastructure to improve the student experience and deliver even better results for the institutions.
In addition, this heavy focus on technology is seeing STEM education (science, technology, engineering and maths) take centre stage as education planners and governments begin to understand what skills adults are likely to need in the future to survive and thrive. And although nobody can accurately predict how artificial intelligence (AI) may shape the future, frontier AI systems are likely to present a plethora of new challenges for the global workforce, regulators, governments and security services.
National governments are anxious about the unpredictability of AI’s potential and its potential legal and regulatory uncertainties. So much so that the UK government convened an AI Safety Summit in the UK last autumn. The summit noted, “we are especially concerned by such risks in domains such as cybersecurity and biotechnology… There is potential for…catastrophic harm…stemming from the most significant capabilities of these AI models.” But there is also great potential for future degree programmes, and for the students who study them, to form the rearguard in a more controlled and regulated AI world policed and administered by technology-orientated and highly educated graduates.
Funding and business models: how might they change?
One final thought on where the sector might be going in terms of its future business model: public-private partnerships and deeper industry-specific alignment in the further-education sector will probably become more common, with private-sector sponsorship not just building new private universities and colleges, but investing with governments to reduce course costs and encourage a closer relationship with industry to further improve the life chances of graduates. It’s high time we saw a new business model that might offer all stakeholders greater efficiencies in the delivery of degree programmes, lower university operating costs, and improved academic outcomes.
A bright and promising future
On the back of significant growth in demand, the best and smartest universities will innovate and establish new alliances and partnerships. They’ll broaden their approach to funding and sponsorship to maximise the efficiency of the degrees they offer and improve their students’ life chances.
The strong focus on STEM education is likely to reflect what the world will look like in 20 or 30 years, and it’s this confidence that will convince investors to keep channelling money into the sector. The GCC and Gulf region is poised to become a centre for excellence and a learning hub for top-flight education for a long time to come, and there’s no better place for it.
