Expanding the UAE’s Higher Education Horizon: Path Toward a Sustainable Future

This chapter provides an overview of the development of higher education in the UAE and discusses how the digitalization and increased automation of world economies have led to calls for reinventing the university to respond to the profound shift in the type of skills needed for the future. In addition, soaring costs and reduced governments financial support are transforming HE into a private commodity rather than a public good. These developments have raised concerns about higher education effectiveness and affordability. This chapter addresses these two major global issues in the UAE context by reviewing the rapid evolution of UAE higher education and its sustainability in light of global, regional and local factors. Based on the competitive realities of the HE landscape locally, regionally and globally, and local demographic and socioeconomic factors, a more proactive national approach to international student recruitment is needed. The chapter also argues that the prevalent discourse on defining HE’s role only as a producer of human resources for the economy is too reductionist and should not be the only basis for curricular reforms.