How COVID-19 is reshaping the role and modes of higher education whilst moving towards a knowledge society: the case of the UAE

ABSTRACT

The higher education ecosystem has been impacted significantly by the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19), creating uncertainty regarding the future of higher education (HE). The coronavirus has compounded the challenges the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is facing in actively producing knowledge capital. This article collects evidence from current scholarly literature regarding the newly emerging skills and jobs needed for building aknowledge society in the UAE. This article explores how higher education in the UAE has transformed its role and its modes of delivery in response to the coronavirus pandemic and, additionally, offers recommendations for how to address these challenges while moving towards aknowledge society. The recommendations coming out of this study are multifaceted, along three main lines:1) maximising the research potential of the UAE’s HEIs by building partnerships between public and private sectors; 2) embracing technology in higher education;3) customising curricula, course delivery, and assessment by adopting online education models; and4) making lifelong learning accessible and affordable for all citizens. By cultivating institutions that are responsive to the changing needs of the labour market, the UAE and its citizens are poised to come out of the pandemic with atransformed higher education system.

KEYWORDS:

• Coronavirus pandemic
• distance higher education
• knowledge-based society
• employability
• United Arab Emirates
• lifelong learning

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the editor and reviewers for their constructive feedback. Many thanks to Mohamed Maree for his insightful comments and Dahlia Maree for proofreading this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanaa Ashour

Sanaa Ashour is currently the Director of the Sociology Program at the College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Ain University in the United Arab Emirates. She obtained her PhD in ‘Development Studies’ from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Bonn, Germany, and a Master’s degree in Social Policy and Planning from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Besides undertaking teaching and research roles as an associate professor in different universities in the United Arab Emirates, Ashour has held numerous senior management and consultancy positions in the public, non-governmental sector and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Germany, London and the Middle East. Her research interests are primarily focused on higher education institutional and policy dynamics. She has published research articles on a range of policy-oriented higher education research topics, including employability, quality assurance, accreditation, internationalisation, and the impact of technology on higher education. In addition, she has authored a book on ‘Ethnic Politics and Policymaking’.