Learning from disruption to accelerate HE transformation

“The biggest structural barrier is that many of our universities are still designed for stability in a world defined by instability.”

This stark assessment by Dr Narimane Hadj-Hamou, founder and CEO of the Center for Learning Innovations and Customized Knowledge Solutions (CLICKS), captures the central challenge confronting higher education in the Middle East and North Africa.

It was the focus of this week’s 7th MENA Higher Education Leadership Forum in Dubai, a three-day forum that brought together more than 300 participants, representing over 200 higher education institutions and organisations across more than 50 countries, with more than 60 speakers and panellists contributing to the programme.

Speaking exclusively to University World News following the conclusion of the 7th MENA Higher Education Leadership Forum in Dubai on 30 September, Hadj-Hamou diagnosed a regional sector that has become proficient at managing crises – shifting online during a pandemic, revising budgets during financial shocks – but still struggles with systemic transformation.

“That is still resilience: absorbing the shock and restoring functionality,” Hadj-Hamou explained. “Antifragility asks a fundamentally different question: What did the disruption teach us and how will the institution be structurally different because of it?”

This paradigm shift – from simply surviving disruption to deliberately using it as a catalyst for institutional redesign – dominated the gathering of university presidents, policymakers and quality assurance leaders in Dubai.

Against a backdrop of compounding regional crises and accelerating technological change, the consensus at MENA-HELF 2026 was clear: higher education can no longer afford to treat disruption as a temporary interruption. It is the new operating environment.

The skills-first shift

The urgency for antifragile institutions in the Arab region is driven by a unique demographic and economic reality.

Francisco Marmolejo, higher education president and education advisor at the Qatar Foundation, framed this reality as the region’s core dilemma.

“The paradox for the MENA region is that despite the spectacular growth in higher education enrolment experienced in recent years, youth unemployment remains high,” Marmolejo told University World News.

“With employers surveyed for the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 expecting 39% of workers’ core skills to change by 2030, Marmolejo argued that universities must rethink how they prepare students for a labour market in which knowledge and skills are changing rapidly.

“The big challenge is no longer whether universities prepare graduates but whether they help them to continuously develop the capabilities required to navigate uncertainty. It is valid to question if a degree is sufficient when knowledge changes rapidly and people must repeatedly renew their capabilities,” Marmolejo said.

This sentiment was heavily reinforced during a keynote by Shizuka Kato, policy analyst at the OECD, who highlighted the accelerating shift toward “skills-first hiring” globally. Employers are increasingly bypassing formal qualifications in favor of demonstrated competencies.

To remain relevant, Marmolejo suggested universities must view themselves as serving a broader demographic: “Not only the 18-year-old beginning a degree but also the 38-year-old updating capabilities and the 58-year-old navigating another transition.”

However, embedding this lifelong, skills-based approach is easier said than done. Dr Mona Ismail, dean of the Scientific College of Design in Oman, captured the mood of many academic leaders at the forum.

Sharing her reflections on LinkedIn following the event, she posed a critical question: “Are we preparing graduates for the world as it is, or for the world they are about to enter?” Ismail stressed that employability cannot be an afterthought addressed at the end of a student’s journey; it must be “intentionally woven throughout that journey”.

Outdated governance a bottleneck

If the external mandate for change is clear, the internal mechanisms to execute it remain sluggish. Throughout the forum’s governance panels and leadership workshops, experts pointed to outdated decision-making structures as the primary bottleneck.

Professor Eman AbuKhousa, an applied AI and analytics advisor with deep experience across regional higher education, argued that the hurdle is not a lack of desire but structural rigidity.

“The biggest internal resistance is institutional design and mindset – not lack of willingness,” AbuKhousa told University World News.

She noted that while universities regularly consult industry, the feedback loop often breaks down internally. “HE lacks institutional agility: the ability to turn external feedback into internal change. Over time, that broken link also erodes industry trust: why keep contributing if the feedback rarely changes what happens next?”

Autonomy and speed limited

This lack of agility is often rooted in the regulatory environments of the Arab world. As Hadj-Hamou pointed out, institutions often operate within frameworks that limit autonomy and speed. While designed to safeguard quality, these structures “make it more difficult for institutions to adapt, experiment and respond quickly”.

Recognising this, the forum’s closing panel, moderated by QS Vice-President of Strategic and International Engagement Ashwin Fernandes, concluded that governance models themselves must evolve.

Similarly, accreditation is being reimagined. A high-level panel featuring leaders from quality assurance agencies in Qatar, Egypt, the UK and the US reframed accreditation from a mere compliance exercise into a strategic lever to enable digital innovation and diverse learner pathways.

Building the co-creation loop

One of the most persistent symptoms of this structural rigidity is how universities approach industry partnerships.

“Industry engagement is still too often treated as an activity, an MoU, internship and-or individual project but not an institutional capability,” AbuKhousa observed. “The loop becomes real when both sides stop participating and start co-creating.”

This requires a fundamental shift in policy, according to Kinan A Bahnassi, a UAE-based senior adviser in policy, strategy and the future of work. Speaking to University World News, Bahnassi emphasised that governments must step in to build the architecture for this collaboration.

“From a policy standpoint, I believe the most critical enabler is an institutionalised mechanism for collaboration – not simply more partnerships,” Bahnassi explained.

“The objective should not be for government or industry to prescribe curricula but to ensure that signals from the economy and society can be interpreted jointly and translated quickly into curriculum, assessment, experiential learning, research and innovation.”

Bahnassi advocates for judging ecosystems not by the volume of agreements signed but by empirical improvements in graduate outcomes and institutional adaptability.

MENA-HELF 2026 itself took practical steps in cross-border capacity building, witnessing the signing of Memoranda of Understanding between CLICKS and quality assurance bodies from Kurdistan (KAAE) and Uzbekistan. However, as the experts noted, the true measure of these agreements will be the feedback loops they generate.

Data-driven adaptation

If universities are to build these feedback loops, they need precise metrics to guide them, particularly in the face of generative artificial intelligence.

While much of the sector’s initial reaction to AI focused on academic integrity – a topic thoroughly debated at the forum by leaders from Turnitin and the Holy Spirit University of Kaslik – forward-thinking institutions are using AI trends as a compass for curriculum reform.

Osama Ajarmeh, a strategic workforce planning and analytics specialist, told University World News that universities must adopt specific data metrics to curate programs effectively.

“Two metrics should be considered to help future graduates navigate the labour market,” Ajarmeh stated.

“The first one is AI adoption across industries, because this metric indicates the rise and fall of certain roles, so it would be better to steer students towards majors that support this change. Another metric is AI impact on existing roles, which measures how the work activities of current roles change over time due to implementing AI tools.”

By tracking these analytics, Ajarmeh noted, universities can proactively alter teaching modules to compensate for looming skill gaps, integrating emerging fields like AI engineering, prompt engineering and agentic AI.

The 5A Model: Never waste a crisis

To operationalise these diverse strands – workforce analytics, co-creation loops and skills-first learning – Hadj-Hamou proposed the ‘5A Model’ during her closing reflections.

The framework envisions an antifragile university that “‘Anticipates change’, ‘Anchors in purpose and local realities’, ‘Adapts its systems’, ‘Activates its wider ecosystem’ and ‘Accounts for impact’.”

Achieving this requires a radical shift in leadership philosophy during turbulent times. Hadj-Hamou warned against the instinct to pause strategic transformation when a crisis hits.

She also pointed to recent research on Palestinian universities, highlighting how inter-university collaboration, community networks, digital learning and local support helped sustain educational continuity under severe disruption.

The experience, she suggested, illustrates how crisis-driven responses can become longer-term institutional capabilities rather than being dismantled once the immediate emergency passes.

‘Use crisis to accelerate transformation’

“In a region experiencing successive and sometimes overlapping disruptions, there may never be a completely stable period,” she told UWN.

“If a crisis forces greater use of digital learning, don’t simply use technology to maintain continuity; use the experience to rethink pedagogy ... The objective should not be to protect the transformation agenda from the crisis. It should be to use the crisis to accelerate the right transformation.

“As MENA-HELF 2026 demonstrated, the conversation in the Arab higher education sector has matured beyond basic survival. The focus groups convened during the forum on research impact, regional collaboration and industry partnerships are currently consolidating their findings into a series of Strategic Leadership Focus Group Reports,” she noted.

When published, these roadmaps will serve as a crucial test for the region's academic leadership.

The ultimate measure of success, as Hadj-Hamou concluded, is no longer just survival: “Perhaps the measure of leadership in a crisis should no longer be simply: Did the university continue to operate? It should also be: What is this university now able to do that it could not do before the crisis?”