The quality of higher education institutions in Saudi Arabian National Development Plans (1995-2018) Plans (1995-2018)

In the Saudi context, the national development plans are governmental documents published by the Ministry of Economy and Planning. The National Development Plan (NDP) is a strategic document issued every five years. It includes Saudi Arabia's economic and social

4 The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) is a United States accreditation body, founded in 1932. It accredits college and university programs in the disciplines of applied and natural science, computing, engineering and engineering technology at the associate, bachelor’s and master’s degree levels (http://www.abet.org/).

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development strategies and development goals in five years. The plans are designed to respond to national priorities, according to local and international variables, in addition to being used as a measure to monitor the effectiveness of implementation with the relevant authorities. These governmental documents are considered to be a report reflecting the current situation (achievements, problems, and challenges) and the governmental opinion about the different issues and their future plans. For these reasons, these plans are very useful documents in serving the research purposes.

These plans consist of two parts. The first part is the plan document, which includes a summary of the development process of the last plan and its achievement, the current situation and problems, the general objectives for the coming period, and the proposed policies and programs for developing different sectors. The second part is the operational plan. It includes plans for each governmental sector’s program of work, general objectives, policies, programs, and projects proposed to achieve these objectives, as well as the financial allocations and manpower and the timetable for implementation.

This section reviews the Saudi plans to trace the entrance of this policy to the Saudi educational policy and what the reasons and conditions were at that time. For the time between 1995 and 2015, starting from the Sixth Development Plan (where the accreditation was mentioned for the first time) and ending with the ninth one, this research goes through these four national development plans, and especially the part on higher education, to portray the new policy and reform concerning the adoption of quality assurance and accreditation procedures in the Saudi higher education sector.

The Sixth National Development Plan (1995-2000)

The accreditation system was introduced for the first time in this development plan, as a solution for the universities’ problems in that period. Between 1990 and 1995, represented in the Fifth Development Plan, several changes occurred in Saudi higher education institutions.

One of them was the expansion of post-graduate studies (massification). In some higher institutions, this was not adequately planned or prepared for. However, some of the other higher education institutions which had the appropriate capabilities abstained from this reform.

Thus, the Sixth Development Plan stressed the need for an internal (national) and external

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(international) accreditation system for evaluating the existing programs and monitoring the establishment of new ones to be in line with relevant resources and standards and recognized internationally. The strategy of the Sixth Development Plan for higher education included, as a second point, raising the quality and efficiency of higher education institutions in order to improve the standard and the content of the educational process.

The Seventh National Development Plan (2000-2005)

This plan described the situation of higher education institutions in the period of the Sixth Development Plan, indicating that who suffered from the problem of the decline in their internal and external efficiency. That was shown by the discord between the labor market’s qualifications and the qualifications of graduates, as well as the increase in the number of years students spent in the universities. With the seventh national development plan, all of this led to an urgent need for procedures which could improve the efficiency of the higher education institutions. In 2000, the National Center of Assessment in Higher Education was founded, which coincided with changes in the admission policies. This center aimed to design and conduct national assessment exams to assess the students’ abilities and skills and their educational achievement. These test results, together with the high school diploma, are used as a standard requirement for college admission.

The Eighth National Development Plan (2005-2010)

This development plan included the importance of quality assurance and academic accreditation procedures as important tools required to achieve the national policy for science, technology, and innovation. Moreover, this development plan mentioned that in the previous period of the Seventh Development Plan (1999-2004), there was a growing interest shown by the Saudi higher education institutions in internal and external evaluation. As a result, some universities’ programs were evaluated according to national or international standards. In addition, some universities tried to get program accreditation, especially for engineering and medicine, from international associations. This plan suggested significant growth in the coming years in this trend due to the royal approval establishing the National Commission for Assessment and Academic Accreditation (NCAAA) in 2003. The foundation of this commission came as a result of the recent obstacles and the need for achieving quality of higher education

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outputs and continues with developments for this sector to cope with global trends (Ministry of Higher Education, 2012).

The Ninth National Development Plan (2010-2015)

This development plan described the quality of education as an important issue and a concern of officers and those interested in higher education issues in this period. It acknowledged that the efforts of the higher education ministry and higher education institutions have contributed to improving the quality of the educational process. This led to high scores at Saudi universities, which led them to obtain advanced places in university world ranking such as Shanghai. Nevertheless, some other Saudi higher education institutions remained sub-standard and cannot compete at all, indicating the disparity in the Saudi higher education institution quality level. This situation demands continued efforts for making improvements as a main goal of this development plan (Ministry of Economic and Planning, the ninth National plans, 2010).

5.9.2 The formation of Saudi quality assurance and accreditation system: The establishment