The Slow and the Swift in the Arab World: Lessons from the Education Sector

This dissertation addresses the apparent shift in the center of innovation and creativity among Arab countries from its traditional centers in countries like Egypt to small countries on the outskirts of the Arab world such as Qatar and the UAE. I use the field of education as an approach to address this shift, focusing on the poor education outcomes in Arab countries in terms of student achievement and relevance to the needs of the labor market. My analysis is based on three building blocks: size, history, and political stability as main determinants of growth and the ability to innovate. My hypotheses are based on the premise that smaller, younger, and more stable countries will have a better ability to reform. The analysis examines the utility of these three building blocks through quantitative analysis. I took this model a step further in the final three chapters by telling the story of the relationship between education and economic performance in Arab countries through a lens which focuses on the three pillar of this work. In chapter 3, I reviewed the effects of history, oil, and political stability considerations on creating and maintaining memorization-based education systems in Arab countries that contribute little, if at all, to economic growth. In the final two chapters, I used the cases of education quality assurance systems in Egypt and Qatar to examine how variations in these three pillars determine the speed of education sector reform. I concluded that smaller countries with shorter histories have less resistance to change. Political stability also reduces the disincentives to change. Based on these analyses, the dissertation concludes by offering a typology of Arab countries premised on aspects of the three pillars. Focusing on size and history, this typology can be used by scholars and policy makers across a range of policy areas, not just education, to predict obstacles to reform in Arab countries in the wake of the Arab Spring.