Minister of Education

Thursday, July 23, 2026

Every morning, universities open their doors.

Thousands of students enter carrying their dreams, and thousands of graduates leave carrying their degrees.

But there is a third door that no one sees.

A door where the future stands.

It knocks on that door every day, but no one opens it.

If the future were a person, it would stand before many of our universities as a stranger unknown to anyone.

It would ask the professor about artificial intelligence, and he would respond with a curriculum written a decade ago.

It would ask the student about tomorrow's jobs, and everyone would give him yesterday's answers.

It would ask the investor: Who will innovate a new product for me? Thousands of degree holders would step forward... but not a single person with an idea.

Here the tragedy begins.

The problem is not that universities are not working.

Rather, they are working hard...

But in the direction the world has left behind.

Universities have often turned into elegant knowledge museums.

Their walls are filled with certificates.

Their libraries are crowded with books.

Their halls are full of lectures.

But the economy does not enter museums.

It runs toward laboratories.

Therefore, some universities teach knowledge as antiquities are taught; for preservation and admiration, not for use and production.

One day, the world measured the wealth of nations by the gold they possessed.

Then it began to measure it by the oil they possessed.

Today, gold is no longer gold.

Oil is no longer oil.

Skill has become gold.

Innovation has become oil.

And the human mind has become the only inexhaustible mine.

Hence, World Economic Forum reports indicate that nearly 40% of the core skills of workers will change within a few years due to technological transformation and artificial intelligence, making continuous learning a necessity, not a choice. A degree alone is no longer sufficient to guarantee survival in the job market.

Perhaps what is most astonishing is that some universities still measure their success by the number of graduates...

As if the farmer celebrates the number of seeds he planted, without looking at the number of trees that bore fruit.

Mathematics

A university does not succeed when it gives a student a degree.

But when it gives society value.

Nor does it succeed when the graduate tosses his cap at the graduation ceremony.

But when the nation's economy raises its productivity thanks to that graduate.

The real crisis is not a gap between the university and the job market.

It is a gap between the speed of history.. and the speed of education.

Technology changes every few months.

Jobs are redefined every year.

Meanwhile, some curricula may remain for years waiting for a committee's signature, then a council's approval, then a body's endorsement, until they reach the student after the world has already moved past them.

It is not a gap.

It is a race that education loses every time it slows down.

The OECD indicates that the most successful economies are those that link education directly to skills development, productivity, and innovation, not just to obtaining qualifications. Therefore, many countries are continuously reviewing their university programs, involving employers in curriculum design, and linking funding to indicators of graduates' real impact.

A university where the student does not hear the sound of the factory.

Where the entrepreneur does not enter.

Where the investor does not discuss.

Where no startup is born.

Resembles a beautiful port where no ships dock.

The building may be magnificent.

But the sea has long abandoned it.

Leading global universities have realized that their mission no longer ends with handing over the degree.

Thus, they now own venture capital funds.

Business incubators and accelerators.

Technology transfer centers.

And companies founded on campus before their owners graduate.

They do not graduate job seekers.

Rather, they graduate job creators.

Perhaps it is time to stop asking the graduate:

“Where will you work?”

And ask the university:

“How many job opportunities did you create?”

The first question looks for a job.

The second question builds an economy.

A university is not a lecture hall.

Nor a concrete building.

Nor a ranking in a global classification.

It is a promise the university makes to its children.

Either it fulfills it.

Or that promise turns into a long queue of degrees searching for a future that was not made for them.

Therefore, the most dangerous type of unemployment is not graduate unemployment.

But idea unemployment.

And the most dangerous type of poverty is not financial poverty.

But poverty of imagination.

And the most dangerous type of waste is not budget waste.

But the waste of minds that could have changed the face of the nation if the university had taught them how to create the future, not how to preserve the past.

And when a historian writes, fifty years from now, the story of a nation's renaissance, he will not ask:

How many universities did it have?

Nor how many thousands of graduates graduated from them?

But he will ask one question:

Did its universities graduate employees waiting for the future... or did they graduate minds that make it?

That is where history begins.

And that is also where the story ends.

** **

- Dr. Khalid bin Sarhan Al-Mutairi

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