By Ursula Lindsey, Cairo. The number of universities in the Arab world has nearly tripled in the last decade, yet a lack of information about institutional structure and quality remains an impediment to reform, regional coordination, and the kinds of international linkages Arab universities increasingly aspire to create.
The just-released report "Classifying Higher Education Institutions in the Middle East and North Africa: A Pilot Study," based on a survey carried out by the Institute of International Education and the Lebanese Association for Educational Studies, with support from the Carnegie Corporation, is an attempt to address this dearth of information, and to lay the groundwork for a reliable regional classification system for higher-education institutions. Yet its writers did not have an easy time gathering the data they needed. The report is as much a plea for greater accountability and transparency as it is a preliminary categorization of universities across the Middle East and North Africa.
"We hope institutions in the region—the ones who responded and, most importantly, the ones that didn't—will really look at this information and start thinking about what types of institutional data they need to start collecting in order to be recognized," says Rajika Bhandari, deputy vice president of research and evaluation at the Institute of International Education and one the report's authors.
The report surveys universities in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates. It notes the extraordinary growth and variety of the higher-education sector in the Middle East. The number of higher-education students in the region has increased from 2.9 million in 1998-99 to 7.6 million in 2007-8. There are 467 universities today, compared with 174 just a decade ago, and more than 1,500 higher-education institutions, including community colleges and technical institutes.
Institutional models vary widely across the region, and include historic, religiously based universities, national universities, new private institutions, and foreign branch campuses. The Persian Gulf leads the region in terms of international engagement and the availability of private higher education.
The report classifies universities by size, type of curriculum, language of instruction, gender composition, international engagement, and other variables. But few universities shared information about several key indicators, such as their support for research, their teacher-student ratio, their faculty qualifications and publications, and their financial model.
In some cases, institutions are simply not in the habit of gathering such information, say the authors of the report.
"One of the eye-opening things for us," says Ms. Bhandari, "was when we went out to collect information, and administrators turned around and said: You know, that's a really interesting question, and no one has ever asked that question before."
Resistance to Evaluation
In other cases, the report notes, education ministries and universities "were slow and/or reluctant to respond because they were distrustful of an initiative that attempted to in any way classify, assess, or rank their institutions ... there appears to be widespread concern that the data will be used to expose or critique institutions in the Middle East by trying to compare them with higher-quality institutions elsewhere, especially in the U.S."
Another significant gap in the report is that Egypt—home to the region's largest population and number of universities—was not surveyed, partly because of the political upheaval there and partly because of the Egyptian Ministry of Higher Education's reluctance to participate.
Having a regional higher-education classification would be useful and encourage greater student mobility and regional coordination, says Rasha Sharaf, director of the strategic planning unit at the Egyptian ministry. But the ministry felt that "comparing Egypt with Lebanon or Morocco is like comparing apples to oranges, because of the difference in size and the many other differences between higher education in Egypt and in other countries," she says.
"The idea of evaluation, generally, bothers people. It's not in the culture," says Noureddin Mouaddib, president of the recently created International University of Rabat. "But we're starting down that road."
Fewer than half of Moroccan universities responded to the survey. Mr. Mouaddib said his university hadn't been contacted but that sharing the kind of information requested would be "no problem" for the research-oriented institution, which already regularly ranks itself against other Moroccan universities.
The Case for Classification
A regional classification system would not only help governments in the area understand their own higher-education sectors better, and figure out where to focus their efforts for improvement, but could also increase international partnerships.
"We put a lot of stock in academic rankings," says Melody Knutson, regional director for North Africa and the Middle East at the University of California's Universitywide Office of Education Abroad Programs. "It would be great to at least have a classification that addressed what percentage of faculty have Ph.D.'s, and from where."
Faculty and students at the University of California are interested in immersive experiences at Arab universities, says Ms. Knutson. Cultural, curricular, and administrative differences can often be solved, she says, but "the problem is not knowing what the situation really is"—whether students will be able to claim credit for the courses they take abroad; whether they will be regularly assessed; what kinds of foreign student services are really available.
Adnan El-Amine, a former professor of education at Lebanese University and the report's other author, says further efforts at classification of Arab universities should "prepare the ground more with universities and with ministries of education to develop their openness, their data production and collection."
"I hope with the Arab Spring our concept of the role of higher education and the role of data will change," says Mr. El-Amine. "We can't make any progress if we put the data in a drawer or treat is as a national secret. Let people see the data and think and analyze and criticize."