Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
Indicators
of the
UAE Higher Education Sector
International Comparison
2013-01
January 2013
Ministry of Higher Education & Scientific Research
United Arab Emirates
International Comparisons
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
2
International Comparisons
CENTER FOR HIGHER EDUCATION DATA AND STATISTICS (CHEDS)
INDICATORS OF HIGHER EDUCATION:
INTERNATIONAL COMPARISONS
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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International Comparisons
CHEDS Publication 2013: 01
What is CHEDS?
The Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics (CHEDS), located within the Commission
for Academic Accreditation in the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, is
the national body for the collection, analysis and reporting of data on higher education in
the UAE.
© 2013 Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research
PO Box 45133
Abu Dhabi
United Arab Emirates
www.cheds.ae
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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International Comparisons
TABLE OF CONTENTS :
1. Introduction
7
2. Australian Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
7
3. United Kingdom Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
8
4. United States of America Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
9
5. United Arab Emirates Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
10
6. Important Differences between the National Systems
11
7. International Comparisons
12
8. Data and Information Sources
18
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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International Comparisons
1. Introduction
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics (CHEDS)
engaged SS Analytics Pty Ltd to provide assistance in researching and compiling
comparative international information for selected indicators of UAE higher education (HE).
The comparative information is from the countries of Australia, the United Kingdom of Great
Britain & Northern Ireland (UK) and the United States of America (USA). This report outlines
data collection characteristics of each of the HE sectors and the data comparisons.
The indicators represent overall national measures using the most recently available
complete datasets provided by the relevant data agencies of each country. The indicators
can be seen in Table 4. Categories within some of the indicators can be seen in the
International Table of Indicators excel spreadsheet provided with this report.
2. Australian Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
Higher education information in Australia is primarily collected by the Department of Industry,
Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIISRTE). The Tertiary Education
Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) reports a national register of 173 HE providers.
However, DIISRTE collections comprise information from 126 of the providers in the register,
public and private institutions, that participate in federal funding programs. The information
collected from the institutions encompasses finance, student profiles, staff profiles, student
outcomes, course completions and research outputs data. Student profile and course
completion data is available for all 126 institutions. However, finance, staff profiles, research
outputs and student outcomes have varying numbers of institutions represented in the
dataset, as shown in Table 1. Within all groups, there is a special group of 38 public
institutions which are defined as self-accrediting HE providers and are composed of
Australian universities and universities of specialisation. The combined enrolment of all 38
institutions holds up to 93% of the combined enrolments of all 126 HE providers considered
by DIISRTE.
Data related to library information was obtained from the Council of Australian University
Librarians (CAUL) and the National Library of Australia (NLA). These sources held data for
46 of the 126 HE institutions considered by DIISRTE. The 38 public self-accrediting
institutions are represented within the available 46 institutions considered by NLA.
Survey data of graduate student satisfaction was obtained from Graduate Careers Australia
(GCA). Out of the 126 institutions considered by DIISRTE, 51 providers apply the survey.
Each institution that participates in the survey must achieve at least a 50% response rate,
from the eligible student population, in order for their results to be published. The 38 public
self-accrediting institutions are represented within the 51 institutions that use the survey.
DIISRTE provides the public with the higher education data cube (uCube) which is a tool that
can be used to generate tables of statistics of the Australian HE sector. The tool can be
found in http://www.highereducationstatistics.deewr.gov.au/ and does not require registration
in order to use it.
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Table 1: Most current year of available data per data category in Australia
Institutions
Most current year of
Data category
represented
complete data release
Finance
39
2011
Student profiles
126
2011
Staff profiles
42
2010
Student outcomes
38
2011
Course completion
126
2011
Research outputs
41
2010
Library data
46
2010
Survey data
51
2011
Programs data
NA
NA
3. United Kingdom Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
Higher education information in the UK is primarily collected by the Higher Education
Statistics Agency (HESA). The collections comprise information from 165 HE institutions
across the four member countries of the United Kingdom, namely, England, Wales, Scotland
and Northern Ireland, with 131 institutions in England, 11 in, 19 in Scotland and four in
Northern Ireland. The information collected from the institutions encompasses finance data,
student profiles, staff profiles, student outcomes and course completions. These collections
represent data from all 165 institutions. However, only one institution in the group is a private
institution. Institutions that are not publicly funded do not have to provide HESA with data.
The private University of Buckingham chooses to provide HESA with data for benchmarking
purposes.
An overview of the private sector, conducted by HESA in early 2010, revealed 65 private HE
providers. While this number of private providers is not accepted as a complete list of the
private sector in the UK, it can be estimated that the sample collected by HESA
encompasses approximately 98% of all HE enrolments in the UK.
The agency does not collect data on research outputs related to academic publications or
UK library statistics.
Survey data of graduate student satisfaction was obtained from UNISTATS. All institutions in
the HESA sample apply the survey and must achieve at least a 50% response rate, from the
eligible student population, in order for their results to be published. UNISTATS also holds
information about the number and type of programs offered by the institutions. This
information is provided via the Key Information Set (KIS) innovation (managed by
UNISTATS) which is available to the public at no cost.
HESA provides the public with the Higher Education Information Database (HEID) which is a
tool that can be used to generate tables of statistics of the UK HE sector. The tool can be
found in https://heidi.hesa.ac.uk/ and can be used upon subscription. The general public can
obtained a free subscription with restricted access to the data. Not-for-profit organisations
can obtain a full access free trial period of up to one month prior to purchasing a complete
subscription.
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International Comparisons
Table 2: Most current year of available data per data category in the UK
Institutions
Most current year of
Data category
represented
complete data release
Finance
165
2010/11
Student profiles
164
2010/11
Staff profiles
165
2010/11
Student outcomes
165
2010/11
Course completion
165
2010/11
Research outputs
NA
NA
Library data
NA
NA
Survey data
165
2012
Programs data
165
2012
Note: The academic year in the UK begins in autumn and ends the following summer.
4. United States of America Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
Higher education information in the USA is primarily collected by the National Center for
Education Statistics (NCES). The collections comprise information from 7,021 postsecondary institutions (including branch campuses), which are divided into two groups,
namely, degree-granting and non-degree-granting institutions. Degree-granting institutions
participate in the Title IV federal funding programs (a USA higher education act of 1965) and
are defined as providers of higher level courses. Therefore, degree-granting institutions have
been identified as the appropriate cohort for international comparisons of higher education
data. The total number of degree-granting institutions is 4,599 (including branch campuses).
1,656 of these are public institutions and 2,943 are private. The information collected by
NCES encompasses finance, student profiles, staff profiles, student outcomes, course
completions and library data from all 4,599 institutions.
The agency does not collect data on research outputs related to academic publications.
The agency collects library information via the Academic Libraries Survey (ALS), achieving a
degree-granting institution unit response rate of 86.1% in the latest available year of data
(2010).
NCES provides the public with the integrated postsecondary education data system
(IPEDS), a data centre which contains a variety of tools that can be used to generate tables
of statistics and trends of the USA higher education sector. The centre can be found in
http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/ and does not require registration in order to use it.
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Table 3: Most current year of available data per data category in the USA
Institutions
Most current year of
Data category
represented
complete data release
Finance
4,599
2009/10
Student profiles
4,599
2009/10
Staff profiles
4,599
2009/10
Student outcomes
4,599
2009/10
Course completion
4,599
2009/10
Research outputs
NA
NA
Library data
3,950 (approx.)
2010
Survey data
NA
NA
Programs data
NA
NA
Note: The academic year in the USA begins in autumn and ends the following summer.
5. United Arab Emirates Higher Education Data Collection and Provision
Higher education information in the UAE is primarily collected by the Center for Education
Data and Statistics (CHEDS). The Center was established as a result of decree No.
347/2011 issued by His Excellency Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan on 12 December
2011.
The Center is relatively new in comparison to the HE data agencies of Australia, the UK and
the USA. However, the objective of CHEDS is to collect data from each HE institution within
the UAE, that is, collections from institutions that participate in federal and other government
funding programs and collections from those which do not. This objective, while still at a
developmental stage, will result in a complete data representation of the HE sector, which is
a characteristic the HE sectors of the comparative countries do not possess.
Table 4: Most current year of available data per data category in the UAE
Institutions
Most current year of
Data category
represented
complete data release
Finance
51.
2010
2011
Student profiles
56
2011
Staff profiles
56
2010
Student outcomes
56
2010
Course completion
56
2010
Research outputs
56
2011
Library data
56
2010
Survey data
45
Programs data
56
2011
Note: The academic year in the UAE begins in September and ends the following June.
The UAE has 102 higher education institutions, 9 public institutions (three federal and others
with major government support) and 93 private institutions (including those in the free
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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International Comparisons
zones), across the seven Emirates, with more than 50% located in the Emirate of Dubai. The
collections should ultimately comprise information, from all 102 institutions, about 62
indicators that are going to be used for the annual HE reporting. A subset of 28 from the 62
indicators has been selected for international comparison. These are presented in Table 4.
6. Important Differences between the National Systems
All the countries considered in this study require data provisions from their publicly funded
HE providers. However, there are significant differences between them in the amount of
information that they are able to capture from their private sectors.
Many of the private providers in the USA participate in the federal Title IV funding programs,
which provide different types of financial aids to students in the public and private HE sectors
of the USA. NCES collects data via a national survey that is applied across the entire sector
of Title IV participating HE providers, resulting in a comprehensive representation of the USA
HE sector with the effects of both the public and the private sectors in all the statistics
available.
Federal funding to students in the Australian HE private sector exists in the form of the
FEEHELP. However, there are many gaps in the provision of data from the private sector.
A possible reason for this is that FEEHELP is a relatively new innovation by the Australian
federal government, which will eventually become more refined as time progresses. The
funding began in 2005 with a very small number of participating providers and it has been
growing significantly every year since then.
In the UK, under certain conditions, some national funding is provided to students in the
private sector. However, the funding has an upper limit, which depends on the type of
program that the student wishes to undertake. If the program fee is higher than the funding
received, then the student is required to pay the difference. Under this system, private
providers are not required to provide data to the government in the UK, meaning that all the
HE statistics available from the UK lack the effect of the UK private HE sector.
These differences affect some indicators more than others. Further detail of these effects
can be obtained from the availability/comparability table in the excel spreadsheet provided
with this report.
Another important difference between the sectors is in the data collection methodology.
Australia, the UK and the UAE require much of the data to be provided at the individual
person level, meaning that the agencies possess the entire HE information database of
students and staff. This approach allows for the highest possible level of granularity from the
data. On the other hand, the USA approach to data collections is entirely based on surveys,
which results in information which is not as granular. For example, if the student profile
dataset is composed of 14 factors of classification (eg male/female, overseas / domestic,
postgraduate / undergraduate, etc.), then 8192 cross tabulations are possible from these 14
factors, which is an amount of information that cannot be collected effectively with a survey
approach.
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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International Comparisons
However, the manipulation of the database produced by NCES is less computationally
intensive. Thus, NCES provides access to the entire database to the public via the internet
at no cost. This can be manipulated for data extractions using the IPEDS data tools.
Due to the nature of the collection methods of the Australian and the UK agencies, a
monetary cost is imposed for the labour associated with ad hoc data requests. A waiting
period of up to 8 weeks for Australia and up to 3 weeks for the UK applies for the provision
of ad hoc data requests. Furthermore, due to the fact that HESA is a company limited by
guarantee (a public company, not for profit) all of its major higher education statistical reports
and products are available to the public at a monetary cost.
7. International Comparisons
The UAE public HE sector representation, of approximately 8% of institutions, is low in
comparison to the public sectors of the comparative countries. The public sector
representations of the comparative countries are 22%, 36% and 72% of the institutions in
Australia, the USA and the UK respectively. However, only the Australian percentage is the
true public HE institution population percentage, but with many gaps in the information
collections, which makes the data skewed towards the public sector. Therefore, due to the
large private provider representation of the USA, it is reasonable to say that, in relation to
this criterion, the USA is the best comparator for UAE HE international comparisons.
Table 5 gives the comparative values of the currently available indicators from Australia, the
UAE, the UK and the USA.
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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Table 5: International comparisons
Indicator Sub-area
number
Indicator
Revenue in US
dollars: Total
institution budget for
the year, with
sources
Expenditures per
student in US dollars
Percentage of tuition
spent on
scholarships
UAE
Australia
UK
USA
1,728,102,530
24,399,260,625
18,616
19,691
16,484
21,245
3.10
5.64
NA
3.30
1
Financial
Resources
2
5
Financial
resources
Financial aid
6
Scope
Average number of
programs offered
13.27
NA
193.19
NA
7
Scope
Percentage of
institutions having at
least one
international
accreditation
30.6
NA
NA
NA
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
44,374,077,790 496,703,608,000
13
Comments
On average, the comparator
countries made a 7.7% gross
profit from the total revenue,
which is 3.5 times higher than
the UAE gross profit of 2.2%.
The UAE figure (for institutions
where students pay tuition
fees) is very close to the USA
figure. This could be due to the
effect of the large private
sectors represented in the data
of both countries.
The difference between the
UAE and the UK is large. This
may be due to differences in
the computation of the average
or in the definition of a
program.
This information is not
centralised in Australia, UK or
USA. It could be estimated via
a survey of stratified samples.
International Comparisons
Indicator Sub-area
number
Indicator
UAE
Australia
UK
USA
9
library
Library holdings
(books & journals) /
per student
70,842 / 41
488,648 / 50
NA
202,056 / 44
10
library
44.8
NA
NA
452.3
11
library
Number of
databases
Library funding as
percent of institution
expenditure
1.05
4.29
NA
1.38
14
Research
Funding
Institution research
Income in US dollars
27,493,19
3,169,268,938
7,136,154,340
72,094,173,002
16
Research
Productivity
Number of papers in
peer reviewed
journals per faculty
0.54*
0.82
NA
NA
17
Research
Productivity
Number of refereed
books published by
recognized
publishers; per
faculty
NA
0.022
NA
NA
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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Comments
The higher average for
Australia may result from its
low private provider
representation in the data; the
lower average for UAE could
be due to relatively small age
of the libraries of institutions
Cf indicator 9: an older library
might have more holdings,
even if the current level of
spending is low.
The average research income
of the comparator countries is
14.5% of the total revenue,
which is approximately eight
times higher than that of the
UAE at about 2%.
*UAE score is equivalent
published single –authored
paper computed for PhD
holders
International Comparisons
Indicator Sub-area
number
21
Research
students
23
Academic
Programs
27
Admissions
& Selectivity
34
Student
attainment
Student
Attainment
36
37
Student
attainment
45
Recruitment
& Retention
Indicator
Australia
UK
USA
321,958
588,720
2,937,454
85.8
82.25
84.04
NA
Average secondary /
high school exit test
scores
Success
80.8
76.5
NA
NA
92.0
84.4
NA
NA
Percentage of
students graduating
in each discipline
Attrition rate
16.2
24.4
30.5
15.9
16.7
16.5
10.7
28.2
Faculty salary in US
dollars
95,765
(including
benefits)
67,557
105,731
76,118
72,889
Number of students
enrolled in postgrad
qualifications
Percent of alumni
satisfied with the
institution
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
UAE
Comments
13,157
15
This combines 3 questions (#3,
4, 7) of the CHEDS-requested
survey (competency, success,
facilities)
The figure is for dropouts from
all levels, not only attrition from
first year. The Australian figure
includes students who have
dropped out of their original
course but still at the same
institutions; the others include
only students who have left the
institution.
International Comparisons
Indicator Sub-area
number
49
Evaluation &
Promotion
51
Faculty
Quality
Faculty
Diversity
54
55
Indicator
UAE
Australia
UK
USA
(excluding
benefits)
27.7
49.1
28.5
44.8
54.5
69.8
NA
NA
30.8
43.6
44.2
47.1
42.03
46.1
43.2
NA
Student
demographics (head
count) / % of
population
109,940
6.7*
1,221,008
5.6
2,501,295
4.5
21,016,126
6.8
35.2
17.90
14.6
11.1
6.6
5.6
0.44
0.47
0.39
Percentage of faculty
of rank full or
associate professor
(or equivalent)
Percentage of faculty
holding a doctorate
Female faculty
(percentage of total
faculty)
56
Faculty
Diversity
Diversity
Age of faculty
57
Load
Student-faculty ratio
58
Load
Student staff ratio
17.03
24.4*
59
Load
Faculty staff ratio
1.29*
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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Comments
On average, the comparator
countries have a female faculty
percentage of 45%, which is
1.5 times higher than that of
the UAE.
*For UAE, the percentage is of
UAE national students to UAE
nationals in the population
(www.nbs.gov.ae)
* UAE figure is high because
institutions did not report staff
of companies for which
services were outsourced
* UAE figure is high because
institutions did not report staff
of companies for which
International Comparisons
Indicator Sub-area
number
Indicator
UAE
Australia
UK
USA
Comments
services were outsourced
60
Load
Percentage of faculty
who are full-time
© Center for Higher Education Data and Statistics
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NA
65.2
50.7
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International Comparisons
8. Data and Information Sources
SS Analytics obtained data and information from the following agencies as primary sources
of data provision for the international comparisons of the 28 UAE indicators.
 Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) [UK]
 Unistats: National Student Survey (Unistats) [UK]
 Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR)
[Australia]
 Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education
(DIISRTE) [Australia]
 Graduate Careers Australia: Australian Graduate Survey (GCA) [Australia]
 National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) [USA]
In addition, information was also obtained from the following sources





Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) [Australia]
National Library of Australia (NLA) [Australia]
Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) [Australia]
Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) [UK]
Government UK (GOV.UK) [UK]
The websites of the following organisations were also explored as possible sources of
information.





Society of College, National and University Libraries (SCONUL) [UK]
UK National Statistics (statistics.gov.uk) [UK]
UK Department of Education (education.gov.uk) [UK]
Australian Government Statistics (australia.gov.au) [Australia]
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) [Australia]
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