Formative Years: Balancing Quality With Demand
Formative Years: Balancing Quality With Demand
As their first priority, HCT's leaders focused on establishing a reputation for program quality. While enrollment levels, the diversity of offerings, and the cost per student were basic considerations, the quality of the learning experience was considered paramount. This pursuit of excellence became the driving force for the system's development and change. In the early years, admission was highly selective and no effort was spared to ensure that students had access to world-class learning resources, equipment, facilities, and faculty, totally free of cost.
In the beginning, HCT modeled its curriculum, human resources, and academic policies on those of the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology. However, during the first year of operation, it became apparent that HCT would be wise to incorporate best practices of other world-class postsecondary systems for several reasons:
• HCT's ultimate stakeholder, industry in the region, was strongly influenced by international practices. In particular, the engineering and accounting industries in the UAE typically followed US and UK standards and codes. This included the key sectors of energy and construction. Skilled technicians and semiskilled operators predominantly came from South Asia. There was little Canadian influence on regional industry.
• The human resource managers of major UAE companies were likely to recognize vocational or educational credentials that followed the British system of higher national diplomas and higher national certificates.
• The system of education followed in UAE primary and secondary schools, coupled with Arabic being the language of instruction, meant that school leavers had very different skill levels and learning styles than students who entered North American tertiary education institutions did. Significant transitional programs had to be designed before HCT could effectively deliver any western-designed curriculum.
These forces led HCT's leaders to mandate geographic hiring adjustments that affected faculty and academic manager recruitment. These adjustments gave HCT a balanced mix of professionals from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia, as well as some with educational or industrial experience in the Gulf region. These international best-of-breed faculty teams then began to refine the original curriculum, in close consultation with relevant PACs, which were made up of representatives from major local employers.
Employers' early feedback about graduate attitudes and intellectual skills helped shaped HCT's policies on attendance, punctuality, and student conduct. Work placement as a program component, systemwide common assessments, and international language proficiency tests such as IELTS (International English Language Testing System) became major directives for future practice. UAE civil service regulations and employer-screening practices prompted HCT to switch from a pass or fail grading system to a letter grade system.
By 1993–1994, thanks to strategic appointments of executives to lead the new colleges and support structure, HCT had a fast-evolving, unique academic system of higher education. To balance an increasing demand for new campuses throughout the country, caused by increasing demand for admission, the leaders introduced a system of centrally monitored checks and balances, with a strong quality assurance and quality control unit at its center. This system included Academic Central Services (ACS), along with streamlined administrative processes via central committees under the leadership of HCT's vice chancellor.
Designing Relevant and Benchmarked Programs
From the outset, HCT's mission mandated that curriculum leaders design and continually refine programs with two primary objectives:
• Programs must be relevant to the needs of local industry so that HCT graduates could be employed at entry-level technical jobs with minimal need for retraining.
• To ensure quality and to maintain articulation paths that would allow HCT graduates to pursue graduate programs overseas, program outcomes must be benchmarked or accredited by relevant international institutions.
Every program cluster offered in each HCT college was expected to have a PAC composed of professional managers from potential local employers. PACs were to review curriculum, suggest changes, and advise on new career program opportunities, as well as foster interaction between HCT staff, students, and the relevant UAE professional community. The importance given to PAC feedback helped ensure that HCT continued to meet its first objective: producing graduates with skill sets that were locally relevant and sought after by employers.
International benchmarking and accreditation were encouraged at three levels:
• Specific programs sought relevant professional accreditation for international benchmarking. For example, all higher diploma and bachelor of applied science programs offered by the business division were accredited by Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSB); higher diploma programs in engineering were benchmarked by Accreditation Board of Engineering Technology – Technology Accreditation Commission (ABET - TAC); and higher diploma programs in information technology were accredited by Edexcel for several years. Health Science programs have also completed their professional accreditation with different international agencies.
• HCT has made significant strides toward institutional accreditation to ensure the quality of its management, administrative, human resources, and program delivery processes. HCT has just begun the candidature process with the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities in the United States.
• Since 1998, HCT has had an internal quality assurance and audit process, which started as a program quality assurance (PQA) process and has now been extended to Service Quality Assurance as well.
