By Saeed Al-Surahihi
IT is an absolute right, rather a duty, of Saudi universities, whether government or private, to attract highly qualified expatriates to become staff members to uplift their educational standards regardless of the nationalities of these expatriates or the countries from which they are recruited.
However, it is also our absolute right to question this trend when we come to know that the number of the non-Saudis contracted by the government universities alone is about 26,000 men and women.
When we add to them the expatriate teachers contracted by private universities, the number becomes huge and astonishing.
It is our right to question if this large number of expatriate university teachers are all better qualified and experienced than the hundreds of Saudis with PhDs and the thousands of them with master's degrees.
These highly qualified Saudi men and women have graduated from renowned international universities or from Saudi universities with high esteem.
They may also include graduates whom Saudi universities have granted the PhDs before they rescinded these degrees and turned their back on them, accusing them of not being qualified enough to teach in the same universities.
Having done this, the universities started looking for the same qualifications in the same specialties in other countries.
By doing so the Saudi universities not only cast doubts on the qualifications of the Saudi graduates but also undermine the credibility of the degrees they themselves have granted them.
When we come to know that the majority of the expatriates contracted by the Saudi universities are associate professors, the claim that the educational excellence of the expatriates will go down the drain.
How can these contracted expatriates be better and more qualified when they hold the same degrees the Saudi men and women are holding?
How can they be better than the Saudis when they have failed to conduct researches and studies that would have promoted them to full-fledge professors in their own universities?
The joblessness of Saudi PhD holders in a country that has 34 universities is really puzzling.
The fact that there are 26,000 expatriate teachers in our public universities speaks of a big loophole in our educational system. It also reveals an ethical default that should be immediately corrected.
The concerned authorities should intervene to know what makes the contracted expatriates better and more qualified than our Saudi men and women with PhDs and master's degrees when they have the same qualifications.
The authorities should carefully study why our highly qualified Saudi men and women who have graduated from top universities in the world are jobless.
We have sent a large number of men and women for post-graduate studies in a number of renowned international universities only to find themselves eating the dust when they come back home dreaming of jobs to serve their country and families.
