KFU and UoG Sign Pact To Promote Educational Programs

KFU President Abdulaziz Al-Saati and Sibrandes Poppema,
president of UoG in Riyadh.

King Faisal University ( KFU ) and University of Groningen (UoG) in the Netherlands signed Wednesday a contract that would open new areas of cooperation between the two universities. The agreement was signed on the sidelines of the fifth international conference on innovations in higher education at the Riyadh International Convention and Exhibition Center, which was inaugurated by Higher Education Minister Khaled Al-Anqari on Tuesday. The accord was signed by KFU President Abdulaziz Al-Saati and Sibrandes Poppema, president of UoG in Riyadh.

According to an official from the embassy of the Netherlands, this is the third service contract signed between the two universities to promote several educational programs, such as training, assessment, exchange and coordination of activities, for the KFU Medical College. The collaboration project between the two universities began in 2010. The Groningen curriculum is being followed at KFU since September 2012. The basic contemporary challenge of many universities is how to combine educational equality with competitive elitism while focusing on talent, said Thomas Wilhelmsson, chancellor at the University of Helsinki, on the second day of the conference.

"The Nordic universities have been quite successful in the massification of university education." Looking at the league tables, the top Nordic universities are well placed and, relative to the population of the Nordic countries, could even be described as the most successful university region in the world, he said. Variations in quality are generally quite low at Nordic universities, he said. Tony Chan, minister of education at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, said: "As the world becomes increasingly complex and globalized, sectors or organizations that resist change can hardly survive."

Universities that stay competitive and prosper are those that successfully embrace change while remaining focused on their uniqueness, he said. Deputy Minister of Higher Education, Mohammed Al-Ohaly, said higher education worldwide is witnessing a quantum leap in massification and diversification of learning opportunities. Due to great advances in information and learning technologies and the wide accessibility offered by the Internet, online education is evolving at a rapid pace, creating noise in the higher education ecosystem, he said.