Challenges and Opportunities for Higher Education in Saudi Arabia: An Exploratory Focus Group

Abstract

The issues impacting on higher education in Saudi Arabia are frequently atypical in nature and are also highly interrelated and individually complex. Further, the information bases from which to draw realistic and useful conclusions with respect to the present and future of higher education in Saudi Arabia are generally extremely limited in both scope and depth, and lack the consistency necessary for valid analysis. As a consequence, the editors of this text presented the Director of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Studies (CHERS) in Riyadh, Dr. Abdulhalem Mazi, with a proposal for an intensive 2-day focus group research project involving all chapter authors (Saudi and international) so that critical issues, challenges and opportunities could be shared and debated and conclusions collaboratively drawn and validated.