Interview with Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan, CEO, UBT Company

30 Aug Interview with Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan, CEO, UBT Company

Country Reports: Three years into the Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 plan to reduce Saudi Arabia´s dependence on oil by diversifying its economy and developing public service sectors such as health, education, infrastructure, mining, entertainment and tourism. What are the biggest challenges and opportunities that lie ahead in order to achieve the Kingdom’s goals. How is the higher education sector contributing to its implementation?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: I believe that Vision 2030 will require many new jobs – jobs that are not yet available in the country. The current universities have yet to produce qualified individuals that can lead the new industries that Vision 2030 is focusing on. Industries such as robotics, cyber security, creativity, entertainment, sports etc. Our education sector is not as developed that it can provide both blue collar and white collar workers to cover those job sectors. That is something that 2030 has opened our eyes to and that is where UBT is headed for as well.

We will invest in sports management, entertainment management, robotics and cyber security. These are the four new subjects that we are planning on offering in our campus.

 

Country Reports: Are there any other higher education institutions that are focusing on these industries or is UBT the pioneer in this respect?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: Universities are able to prepare students for the jobs of today, but I believe that for the jobs of the future, universities have yet to catch up. We at UBT are focusing on the future. “Education for job opportunities” has been our slogan since 2000. We’ve built this institution starting with thirty-three (33) students, male and female, and now we have over six thousand (6,000) graduates in the workforce.

We have five thousand eight hundred and ninety (5,890) students who are graduates already. It is a big number compared with other universities. In line with our slogan “education for job opportunities”, we fill the gap between the market needs of tomorrow and what we can provide in terms of programs.

The impact of any new program can be felt or measured in a span of six years. An educational program lasts for four years, and then after graduation, it’s two years of job training. So it’s six years from the start of the program that we are able to measure the impact of the product.

I think the biggest challenge that we have is time. If we can utilize time better – I am not going to ask for more time – but if we can have more hours for our companies in the same day, have better compensation systems and labor laws that offer more flexibility for the private sector, then we would have better results in less time. These are major concerns that need to be tackled.

 

Country Reports: Going into UBT’s employment range, it is considered as one of the highest in the Kingdom where 78 percent of your graduates are being employed within six months from the day of their graduation. Please share with us what are some of the key factors behind this success. How is this performance maintained? Do you also wish to further improve on this number?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: We do have hopes on further improving on that number, however it is very challenging just to sustain it. Changes and trends move at a faster rate than the time available to review the programs. The secret is in reviewing academic curriculum every four months in order to meet the requirements of the market. It is important to have a research unit that is constantly studying employability — around the world, but also the local market in particular. HR (Human Resources) practices change, as do accounting, engineering. Technology has overtaken processes so we don’t process the policies anymore. We are left to determine our role, is it more on planning or strategy? Monitoring? Controlling or overseeing? We don’t know yet. The answer comes back every four months to the academic department where they review and ensure that the content of the program is in alignment with current findings and trends. This way our graduates are better equipped to address market needs, and it would also take them less time to integrate into the workplace. As soon as they graduate, it takes little time for them to immediately practice what the job descriptions require of them. This is how we do our part in bridging the gap between theory and practice.

UBT is not just about education for the love of education. UBT is not only about education for the love of knowledge, or to contribute to the furtherance of knowledge. We also love knowledge, and we transfer knowledge, but our mandate is “education for job opportunities”. We help advance our society through that. It goes back to our beginnings, and it is why we are growing and why we are successful now. We are investing in another eight hundred million in the next eight years in support of this mission.

 

Country Reports: UBT graduates are considered highly prepared and ready to ¨hit the ground running¨ once they greaduate. Do you find that a lot of big-name companies are actively recruiting your graduates?

Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: The good news is that the HR managers and recruiters of most of these big-name companies are actually our graduates. They are looking for their peers, for fellow alumni.

In the past it was more difficult to bridge ourselves with the industries. We didn’t have a name, we have yet to have a legacy, and we didn’t have a track record to speak of. But now it has come full circle and our graduates are looking for us again. The institution is more established now than it was before.

A 2018 graduate is more adept – in theory and in practice – compared to a 2007 or 2008 graduate. We are constantly improving on the programs with every batch of graduates. Of course the industry brings in more refined knowledge than what the employee would need for himself in the future, and we cannot compete with that, but what we do is we bring the industry into our advisory boards.

For every academic department – we have over eighteen departments – there is an advisory board. That advisory board encompasses the industry it belongs to. It includes leaders such as CEOs (Chief Executive Officer), CTOs (Chief Technical Officer), the human capital, as well as representatives from different departments. These individuals guide and advice us on what our graduates need to know, what level of language proficiency should he have, and so on.

We are always in touch with the industries. Disconnection with the industry means failure in our mission, while a strong connection would translate to success. We really hope that the other forty-two universities and colleges in the country would follow the slogan “education for job opportunities” because it is better to ensure that graduates are gainfully employed rather than contribute to unemployment. Unemployment is a big problem, a huge issue.

 

Country Reports: Would you say that some universities here are very traditional and not really adapting to new technologies and the changes that are occuring in the Kingdom?

Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: Some may want to adapt and improve but they do not have the authority to do so. Some of the challenge is related to legislation, and other times it is rooted in mentality. Some of the challenge also stems from leadership. We do have leadership, of course, we have the Crown Prince, and the King. We have top leadership pushing everybody towards one direction, one clear vision that we never had before. Yet, we may not have the proper legislation in place, today’s university leaders may not have the right mindset to embrace change.

How universities are being managed today has to change. They need to be given more independence. Legislation also needs to be fixed in such a way that programs can be reviewed on a daily basis. Currently, if I have a new program I need to wait six months for it to get an approval from the Ministry of Education. Technology is changing every day and if I were to review my program every day I will go bankrupt. I don’t have enough resources to do that. I need flexibility.

Four months is a lot. If you are only reviewing yourself eight times during the course of a four-year program and you are teaching advanced computational studies, you would be outdated; your graduates would be outdated. I need more flexibility. In order for me to invest in robotics and in cyber security and entertainment and AI (artificial intelligence) I need more flexibility from the Ministry of Education.

You see, it is a double-edged sword. There is no doubt that the leadership behind some universities need to change, be updated or further trained. In addition, something must also be done about the law or the legislation that governs public and private universities wherein we are pushed to always refer to the university council. These councils are pulling us back from leadership. If we want to be among the top 100 universities in the world, we certainly can. We have the people, the resources, the right mindset. But we need to be more flexible, and the Ministry of Education needs to help us. Legislation needs to help us. We need to be able to recruit students from all over the world. I cannot have Jeddah as my market and then compete against Harvard or Boston University. I need to have the world as my market and then I can attract the best and produce the best while also contributing to knowledge. The only way we can achieve this is to have a bigger market to recruit from. That is not yet available, by the way.

 

Country Reports: You have worked in many different countries in the last fourteen years, so you must have a really good understanding of higher education standards across the world. How do you think Saudi Arabia compares in terms of quality and standards on a global scale?

Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: I have worked in three countries but I have lived in five. The other two where I lived in was for a non profit, so it was for a volunteer assignment.  The industry of higher education In Saudi Arabia is still immature. We are only twenty years old. It is younger than you and I, and this is the entire industry we are talking about. We would like to think that we have been around for a long time, we have six thousand students, but really we are only twenty years old compared to a two hundred year old university in the UK or in the States. That is something that we need to acknowledge, that the industry is fairly new and young. The advantage is that the proper laws and rules can be assessed before they are put in place and before it becomes too late, and people get really stuck in the old processes. We need assistance and the push from our Crown Prince to enable universities to become part of the top 100 universities in the world. It is more than possible with the right legislation and proper leadership.

 

Country Reports: From the short to medium term, do you think that it is possible for UBT to become one of the top 100 universities in the world? Is this something that UBT aspires for?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: If we are flexible, yes we can. We are flexible with that.

 

Country Reports: Let´s talk about the new campus.

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: New campuses, actually. We have a property behind the waterfront, but all the top floors will be overlooking the waterfront. It is going to be the first university overlooking the Red Sea.

This is the other campus that we are building (viewing artisit impressions). It is a huge campus. Both are self funded. We did not use any banks or loans. This is part of how we believe in 2030. We will invest all that we have in the future of education, and again, we seek the help of leadership for greater flexibility. We are a for-profit, private university and we need to be able to recruit students from all over the world to be able to sustain our growth. Otherwise we will close our doors.

 

Country Reports: You are building the university on prime waterfront real estate. When do you plan to open these campuses?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: This campus is slated for next year. This is in 2025, the second one. This is the Cornish campus. Today, it is dedicated for females as the law dictates that females should study alone, and males should also study alone. The other campus is for the males. If the law changes in the future, then automatically it would become a mixed campus.

You can ask me why this is located 35 kilometres away from here: it is because the government does not give us any privilege being in the education sector and in terms of providing loans or land. We receive no privileges and we are even treated as if we are a carbon producing company. Whether we do community services or CSR (corporate social responsibility) programs, there is no difference in the way they treat us. Whether it is the municipality, the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Commerce, there is no privilege.

In the past twenty years there was one privilege, and that was to rent out those pieces of land to higher education institutions for very minimal cost. But now it does not make any sense. Vision 2030 asks for greater contribution from the private sector at the education level but it is not translated into legislation. This is why we need to have better laws, greater flexibility, and we need to support responsible businesses.

Our universities are self funded. There is no other way. This is why it takes us time. We have been in construction for the Cornish campus for the past three years. We are now at the end of construction, with the full structure almost finished. We will sign the finishing contract two days from today, and then we will get the final approval from the municipality for the north campus. Once they approve the final details, we will start on-ground movement.

For Cornish we are building two full floors under the sea. You have the pressure of the Red Sea coming in and that needs to be balanced with the concrete, so that took us two years to finish. We have been treated as if we are a carbon company for this. I am not sure how it is called, but when you remove the water from the ground, it has to be poured somewhere, and we were not allowed to pour it into the Red Sea. We are only one road away. It is just ten metres between our land and the Red Sea. We had to pay millions for this process.

We had to fight for three years in order to secure the land. It was zoned for residential initially so we had to fight for it to change so that we could build a university. The whole area is considered a ¨middle to high income¨ area. This is the area where students are able to fund themselves. It is exactly the target market that our university caters for.

Country Reports: This would be very much an iconic institution here, there is nothing like it in Jeddah. You are investing a lot in it.

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: We are investing a lot of advanced technology, high end furnishings. We have our own brand of furniture that comes from Italy only for that campus. Everything is color coded specifically and only for us, so no other university will have them. The furniture is customised from scratch. Everything is eco friendly. We have a very unique touch to that Cornish campus.

Country Reports: What courses would you be offering there?

Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: The courses that we offer presently, which is College of Engineering, business, law, and advertising. We also have seven graduate programs. We have MBA, and Masters of Engineering Management program or MEM. We have Masters of Science, Finance and HR and retail management, and other business programs. There’s also HR, information systems, marketing, logistics, finance and accounting. There are five MSE’s, one Masters of Engineering Management, and one MBA. In total we have seven graduate and eighteen undergraduate programs. This is what we have today but the campus allows for more. What we have in our mind is new programs. We have started this year the retail management program, which is good news for us. We are also looking at a College of Supply Chain Management program. I believe that supply chain management and logistics are the catalysts of the economy in 2030. Much focus is on logistics and contracting, warehousing, transportation, maritime, and aviation, and how to manage these industries. A specialized College of Supply Chain Management program is ideal for this region.

Country Reports: It is especially timely with the e-commerce revolution happening in the Kingdom.

Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: Of course. It would also be in line with new maritime projects such as the King Abdullah Port, the Jeddah Port, and the Eastern Port, so we need more people who are skilled and knowledgeable of the different parts of the supply chain.

We also have projects for the College of Robotics and College of Cyber Security as well as College of Sports Management and Entertainment. Just to clarify, sports management is separate from entertainment and these are at the management level. We are not going to teach you how to become a soccer player, but we can teach you how to supervise teams and coaches. We focus on the the business management aspect of these industries.

We have the largest sports city, which is King Abdullah Sports City that is only ten kilometres away from our new campus and only three kilometres away from our old campus. It makes so much sense for us to train their intakes. The way we look at it is like building a new Concorde airplane, but not having anyone to pilot it. You can have the best airplane in the world, but it has no captain. And supposing you do have a captain and he leaves, what will happen? So you need to have a pool of captains and co-captains, and so on.

This is how we look at 2030. It is a destination, and you need people to drive you there. Where are they? It is not about 2019 or 2020. It is about 2030.

Country Reports: You certainly are a cutting edge group. Tell us about any type of partnerships or affiliations that you are open to? Perhaps partnerships with other universities in the world? Or are you more focused on what you are currently doing at the home front?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: What we do is that we partner with other universities for certain programs where both our names are credited. We do like what other universities do around the world. But this is not the best set up for us. What we prefer is to equip our students with greater skills for their specialisation. We send them to other universities that are highly regarded for those skills. For instance, for advertising we also send our students to the New York Film Academy. They also go to certain schools in Italy and Japan that only specialize in advertising. For law they go to France.

Country Reports: So they are exchange programs.

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: They are not necessarily exchange programs but it is part of their curriculum to learn international law. That module is learned in France. For advertising, they also have to learn about film advertising and they are sent to the New York Film Academy for that. For the engineering program, they also have to learn about robotics and that part is done in Germany (28:35)Technical College, for example. We try as much as possible to expose our students to real life practices as if they are getting a global degree.

We are trying our very best. We are not a government entity. We do not have an open budget like others. We do not have endowments. We do not receive philanthropic donations because we are a private business. What we do have is the trust of employers. This, for us, is like hitting the jackpot.

Country Reports: Tell us about the potential of online education. Are you seeing a big push there, are you having students wanting to do distance ed and learning online or is it still very much campus based?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: There has always been a question mark when it comes to online education. It’s awkward. If you want your online degree to be recognised equally with a traditional degree here in Saudi it would not be accepted. There is a tendency for online things to be considered second rate, but it is not necessarily true. You and I for instance, we communicate online through WhatsApp. It is effective. We need to consider that online communication, which is not face-to-face is effective and is not only generating the global economy but is also sustaining it. We need to revisit the definition of online education. I am not referring to myself, rather to the Ministry of Education. They need to look at online education as an opportunity.

In the past years, universities were allowed to transform 25 percent of their curriculum into online programs so that they would be able to combine the biggest number of students with the least number of faculty, and take advantage of the efficiencies of scale, growth, and so on. But we haven’t done that. We did not transform. And when it was stopped by the ministry we did not ask for it to enabled again.

We believe in total solutions, so it was either totally in-class physically or totally online. Half-half is something that I cannot guarantee. The way we look at it is like we are producing a brick. The only two quality indicators for that brick is its capacity against humidity and its actual strength, as in how much it can hold. For online education there are criteria and controls that I need to implement fully, and for in-class there are other criteria. Mixing them together will not produce the same quality. My promise will not be the same. It might be better or less effective, I do not know, but I am not in a position to test. We are also a business, and I look for sustainability. I want to have UBT as it is now, and then maybe have UBT Online so I can have both options.

We have the technology for it, and we have done a study, we are in the lead. If the ministry suddenly says we need to transition online, it’s as easy as pressing a switch. We are ready. We have transformed seventeen courses online and they are ready. They are the general courses, the courses that all students need to take at any college. At UBT. they are all ready at an online level.

 

Country Reports: Do you think that this is something that we will see over the next three to five years?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: This was already available ten years ago. Actually, what I wish for is that all universities will be allowed to provide an online degree – a full degree, from A to Z. Furthermore, that online degrees be accepted as official and legitimate degrees.

This is how the Saudi Electronic University is operating today. The government initiated an alternative solution to online education and they called it the Saudi Electronic University. It is the only university that is allowed to provide a degree fully online. Students need to come in physically for exams and such, but everything else is conducted online. If it is successful, why not replicate the model? What are we waiting for? If it is feasible, why not share the feasibility?

We are looking at 2030 as a vision. It is a shared economy, it is no longer a one-man show. Change needs to take place. Online education, the recruitment of students, student loans, student privileges, and privileges for socially responsible institutions. There are some of the sectors in dire need of change. I think we will not reach 2030’s KPIs (key performance indicators) by January 2030 if we do not address those problems. Those four issues need to be addressed immediately.

 

Country Reports: Let us talk about your journey. The university started with just thirty students and now you have close to six thousand alumni.

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: We have around five thousand eight hundred (5,800) alumni. We started with exactly thirty-three (33) students in 2000 as an institute. We are self funded when we started, with zero loans. Ours is an organic growth. We were the first for-profit higher education institution in the country. It was not easy to convince the Ministry or the government in the year 2000 that for-profit higher education institutions is also worth looking into, that they can also contribute to society. It was not easy. There was difficulty in digesting the idea that a company can make money while also contributing to knowledge. These are just the facts. We have retained our income in the past nineteen years. We did not distribute income, there are no dividends. This is how we are growing.

 

Country Reports: UBT has been a pioneer in many different aspects. You are cutting edge and you have a great business model. When you eventually decide to step down and perhaps pursue another path, what kind of legacy would you like to leave behind? How would you like people to remember your leadership style?

 Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: I believe in vocational training. I believe that it is one body part that is missing in UBT today. It is something that I am working on now. Before I leave I want to make sure that it is operational, effective, and that it has already produced a capacity that the labor sector requires.

Today the youth and the new generation is unable to fund themselves the same way that we used to ten, twenty years ago. We need to have shorter and more effective programs. We need more hands-on skills, less theory, and immediate job employment. The two-year diploma that is available all over the world is something that we are also working on today.

Language proficiency is another problem to tackle. Yesterday I signed off the Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and the French language programs along with English in our UBT Academy Language Institutes. Starting January 1st in 2020, we will launch a major campaign for it. Everybody in this country and in the region will know that we have five language programs and that they are beginner friendly.

Language proficiency is weak in education. Vocational training is even weaker. Universities and higher education is great but the jobs available in the market – 70 or 80 percent of them will not hire graduates from universities because they demand for high pay. The future requires maybe less qualifications, so there should be less schooling.

The legacy that I would like to leave is that we grow UBT into six campuses. It used to be two. We have introduced the language programs, we have introduced the vocational programs and we are the pioneers in executive education also. We train over twelve hundred executives in five different countries. We have Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE (United Arab Emirates), Sudan, and Saudi of course, in different cities. I never thought that there is interest in this area but only by introducing it at a very fair value did we come to realize that the demand is high. It is so high that every month we have a new program. So I believe that by the end of my contract we will have twenty-eight (28) different programs.

Country Reports: Final comments for the readers of Newsweek?

Mr. Mohanad A. Dahlan: I just want them to know that Saudi is no longer the Saudi that they know of before. The people of Saudi were ready for a transformation, and as soon as it happened they embraced it immediately. There is no reduction. Investment opportunities are limitless. Everyone is welcome to join us to develop this region.

We have abundant natural resources. We have people that are willing to learn, willing to be trained. We are likewise willing to train, and to merge and collaborate as an educational institution, as a real estate company, and as an asset management company. I am willing to open all doors for any investment, any opportunity that can help develop this region. This is my objective. Thank you very much.