Ali Saad Al-Moosa
Higher education institutions are being pressured to Saudize jobs and replace expatriate academic staff with Saudis. We have heard hundreds of stories about Saudi professors whose job applications have been turned down by local universities although most universities are in dire need of highly qualified academic staff and send their professors and recruitment officers abroad in search of such candidates.
Frankly speaking, I find it hard to believe that a 35-year-old Saudi professor who has a real and genuine PhD degree has been turned down by a local university. I believe most of the professors whose job applications have been turned down completed their PhD programs in local universities or in academic institutions located in nearby countries where one can easily get a PhD degree. Al-Watan daily recently published a report saying that most of those who graduated from local universities have degrees in Islamic studies and similar specializations and that less than one percent of them have applied science qualifications.
Am I against Saudization in the education sector? Yes, I am and I oppose it openly. I am against it in elementary, intermediate and high schools, and even in colleges and universities. Why? Partly because of the reasons that I have already mentioned. I am against it because education is supposed to allow us to accept other cultures and learn new things. I am against Saudizing elementary schools and universities because the education process is bigger than that.
In its golden age, King Saud University had students from different parts of the Middle East and North Africa. It had professors of various nationalities speaking different languages. During my elementary to secondary education, I was taught by teachers from different countries. I went to King Saud University and was taught by professors from 10 different countries.
Let us look at universities abroad. Princeton University boasts that it has students and professors from 97 nationalities. If I had the power to make decisions in the education sector, I would require each school to have an expatriate teacher who would teach students one class every day. I would require all universities to allocate funds to fund expatriate students who want to enroll in them.
