Special to ag-IP-news Agency
ABU DHABI - Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mubarak, Minister of Higher Education of the United Arab Emirates, the 4th QS Middle East and North Africa Professional Leaders in Education Conference and Exhibition (4th QS-MAPLE) hosted by Abu Dhabi Education Council and Khalifa University kicked off in Abu Dhabi with HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, chairman of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization (TAG-Org) calling on all parties to embrace the changes in education.
In his plenary address, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh, President of Talal Abu- Ghazaleh University (TAGI-UNI) stressed on knowledge age saying: "The world today is moving at an unprecedented pace. Every minute, millions of activities take place on the Internet. Over one third of the world’s population today is online and is using the Internet for various purposes."
"High speed Internet is the demand of the day, 4G subscribers are expected to cross one billion in the next few years. Come the end of 2014, there will be more mobile phones in the world than people," he added.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh focused on the changes in education calling it "online Tsunami," and asking - When will we turn to learning instead of teaching?
"When will Teachers turn into Tech Entrepreneurs and into Tech Leaders? What is the point of going to universities? Recession means half of graduates are working in jobs which do not need a degree," he said.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh gave examples of real successful people who said no to traditional college and made it in the real world such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs in addition to others who became today one of the richest people in the world.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh warned that the Digital Tsunami will crush traditional education giving a real example of the effort of TAGI-UNI which was established to make accredited educational programs accessible to everyone everywhere through its partnerships with elite universities and educational institutions around the world.
"The failure of traditional universities is evident and will only get worse unless radical steps are taken to reform them. Reformation is a requirement in order to meet the demands of the students of today and those in the future," he said.
TAGI-UNI so far partnered with Canisius College, Amity University, Fort Hays State University, Northampton University, The University of Scranton, Liverpool University, Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University and Walden University in addition to others.
He also gave a briefing on some of the projects TAG-Org is currently heading such as: TAGEPEDIA, TAGCLOUD, Smart School, Digital School and TAG Smart Solutions and TAG Smart Media.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh concluded by saying that knowledge creation is the major source of wealth and education is facing an overwhelming tsunami that will sweep it and regretting that "our government still prohibits digital education and I hope one day it will open their eyes to embrace the future of education."