Opinion | Editorials
UAE colleges need to focus on research
Universities must review priorities if country is to join the knowledge economy.
- Gulf News
- Published: 22:46 April 4, 2009
Universities and colleges perform several functions in the country and some of their most important activities have nothing to do with the all-important teaching.
By definition, teaching involves lecturing on what is in the past. A lecturer can only teach what has happened and what has been tested.
However, one of the most important non-teaching functions that a university can offer is the ability to look ahead and see what the future holds in any particular speciality.
Research and original thinking should be at the core of what universities have to offer, yet this is where the UAE has yet to build its institutional capacity.
Research students constitute around five per cent of the total student body in the UAE.
This is very low compared with other countries like Britain, where about 25 per cent of the student body is working on post-graduate work.
Technology is moving fast, and new industries are starting. This is not the time to be stuck in the past, and businesses need to move quickly to prepare themselves for the next century.
They can only do this if they get quality research pointing the way to new technologies and new methods of working. Research is about looking to the future, while teaching is about repeating the past. Both are essential, but society needs research in order to have the skills for the next generation.
The UAE is well placed to pick areas of knowledge vital to its own society and economy, and start building global centres of excellence in research. An example of this is the planned research institute attached to the ground-breaking Masdar project.
Research is going on in most of the country's colleges and universities, but it is not enough. The UAE needs a lot more to be part of the knowledge economy of the future.
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