Higher education ministry threatens to shut down private universities

YEMEN - All the private universities have no final licenses. They have only preliminary ones, threatening them of withdrawing these licenses unless they comply with the legal requirements, disclosed the Higher Education and Scientific Research Minister, Saleh Ali Ba Surrah.

The minister reiterated that, “We don’t want cabins, apartments or buildings; we want to see integrated structures that are competitive to the public universities and not just a clone of them.”

The minister was speaking at the third higher education conference, Challenges of Higher Education and the Academic Accreditation in the Third World, held in Sana’a last Sunday. The conference lasted for three days, and saw an unprecedented attendance.

“Before the revolution, there were no universities in the entire country. However, there are 300,000 students in the Yemeni universities today.” the minister said.

The minister called the academic leaders at universities to abstain from trifles and to focus on the strategies, essentials, and quality, so as to identify the defects.

“The Higher Education Ministry is exerting efforts to complete the procedures of establishing an academic accreditation council with quality assurance. The ministry is also preparing to complete restructuring the administrative organization and the network link between all Yemeni universities.

It seeks to complete a project to modernize and develop programs and curricula; it will continue the implementation of the project of professional faculty members and their assistants’ development, as well as the upgrading of scientific research, with support from development partners, led by Dutch friends and the World Bank,” the minister added.

The difficulties that impede improving the quality of education include the expected resistance to change from any developing country. Another challenge is the unjustifiable distrust shown by some academic and administrative leadership towards the evaluation process imposed by the requirements for quality assurance and information.

Mr. Ba-Surah called on the Ministry of Finance to understand the urgent development needs of universities. This is especially in regards to adopting a budget for establishing  an academic accreditation council. The council will increase  the president’s award for scientific research to YR 4 million. He also called for support to the modernization and development of the school curriculum by allocating amounts towards it in the next budget.

Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Mujawar ensured the government’s support to Higher Education Ministry’s efforts for completing the implementation of the higher education’s national strategy and the execution of the universities network link.

“The educational output is inconsistent with the support and care they find by the state, despite the roles and powers of those in charge of management of these institutions,” the PM said. He stressed the role of the universities’ leaderships in taking the responsibility to make higher education advanced by looking for the constructive aspects in order to avoid the negative ones.

“The universities should reformulate their messages and identify their objectives to meet their development, geographical and regional areas’ needs. There is a need for assessments so as to correct the defects and achieve the state’s and community objectives,” the Prime Minister said at the conference, stressing the need for giving priority for continuing administrative and academic performance development programs, update of curricular, teaching methods, upgrade of the  teaching staff, develop the applied scientific  research methods and strengthening transparency and accountability principles.

A call for doubling efforts to upgrade universities performance came from the PM, since problems in Yemen need a more in-depth look at higher education institutions. Yemen faces the government and all the administrative and academic systems with the hard task of overcoming the universities performance quality and academic accreditation problems.

Private universities should prepare themselves by doing voluntary self-assessment before being imposed on by the government with harsh measures. The right start is to document the process of improvement and development of what is going on in the institutions in, accordance with the standards and principles adopted in this regard.

“The universities should develop their curricula, management and teaching methods. They have to ensure the professional development of teaching and administrative staff and promote scientific research,” urged PM Mujawar ensuring the need for establishment of transparency, accountability and use of technology in the teaching and research. He stressed the importance of coordination, integration and communal partnership for achieving their objectives that enable them to keep pace with the challenges that make them transfer the knowledge and build the national educational matrix.

Dr. Amen Annabawi, the Administration Professor at Ain Shams University gave a speech on the opening session in which he emphasized the need to ensure the quality of output of higher education institutions in the Arab world, reviewing the exceptional conditions recently experienced by higher education at local, regional and global levels, attributed to the great changes of the surrounding community which shifted towards the communal knowledge.

Related Content

•  Tribesmen abduct SJC head's brother
•  7 people arrested for possession of weapons
•  Al Qaeda member arrested
•  70 Ethiopians arrested in Yemen
•  Five killed, three wounded in floods
•  Eritrean pirates hijack 4 Yemeni fishing boats
•  Eritrean pirates capture 6 Yemeni fishing boats
•  Diesel smuggler seized in Hadramout
•  Documentaries enhance youths’ voice
•  Two and half tons of corrupt goods spoiled, municipality director of Addalea