A review - Working conditions in UAE Universities

• Hi there,
  
  I am taking this opportunity to write my experience of teaching in UAE Higher Education sector in Universities.
  
  Let me first give you a bit of idea about the general Uni ranking across the country:
  
  1. UAE University - Al-Ain
  2. American University of Sharjah - Sharjah
  3. University of Sharjah
  4.The rest of the universities are all the same (A BIG CRAP) with plus minus 2-3 thousand of UAE dirhams per month.
  
  To begin with, there is ABSOLUTELY NO RESEARCH CULTURE IN UAE UNIVERSITIES.
  
  For the new PhDs I think this is the worst place to start your career, in a sense that no research and more money (as compared to a postdoc salary) will ruin your research and whole day teaching will kill you.
  
  The standard salary per month is approx 15-20000 UAE DHMS + 65-75000 Dhms/year house allowance Tax free.
  
  Do not worry the money looks great but you have to sacrifice a lot. There is no professionalism in the teaching, the students have a very low standard of intellect, they are not willing to work neither they are willing to study. They just want to obtain degree for the heck of it, which might give them a boost in their professional careers.
  
  Most of the Universities are replete with poor standard old modelled PhD professors, who are just here to make money and have no intentions of doing research neither they are interested in it.
  
  There is a lot of petty arab group politics, mostly each department has its own lobby of Arab nationals, like in some department if the Dean is Egyptian he will favor egyptians and if Sudanese he will support sudanes...etc.
  
  These days due to Iraq migration, there are lot and lots of Iraqi PhD professors teaching in the Universities. In my view, Iraqis have very very poor standards of education and since due to the war and being an arab native speaker they are available at very low rates.
  
  Most of the private institutions are just here for minting money, No Standards, No research and Poor teaching quality. Iraqis, Algerians, Egyptians, Sudanese, indians (all redundant old people) are dominating the system and applying poor standards of education. You can imagine if some one has done PhD in 1980s from babylon university iraq or even from an unknown UK or canadian University, what knowledge he /she can apply to the system.
  
  The transportation system here is too bad, sometimes one has to travel 2 -3 hours in Rush one way to reach home and same for the next day.You can imagine if you finish your class at 9:00 PM, reaching home at 11:00 PM and have to get up for morning class at 6:00 AM to reach ui after 3 hours at 9:00 AM.......do not you think its a hell.
  
  TRAFFIC IS TOO BAD AND UNORGANIZED IN SHARJAH AND DUBAI
  
  sometimes one has to travel hours to reach office and same while coming home back.
  
  Most of the Universities are in Dubai Academic city which is far away from Dubai Center and ther is no transportation available either, and lots of rush and traffic too. It sucks.....really sucks.
  
  I will wait for the comments and will write a bit more in details later.
  
  The TOP worst Universities in UAE;
  
  BITS PILANI
  MANIPAL
  PRESTON
  ALGHURAIR UNIVERSITY
  AJMAN UNI
  ......
  Many more

  19 Mar 2009, 12:23 Richard

Replies

• UAE education sector jobs

  I totally agree, great article.

  Gohar 20 Mar 2009, 12:55 - Report