Guest Articles

The UAE's higher-education sector is experiencing a remarkable scale of growth, cementing its place as one of the region's most dynamic success stories. During the previous academic year 2025/2026, enrolment across the country’s universities reached 218,241 students, including 64,859 new students – the highest enrolment rate recorded in five years . Beyond signalling confidence in the system, these figures reinforce the UAE’s growing position as a destination for education, talent development and long-term professional opportunity.

But enrolment alone cannot tell us whether the system is developing the capabilities an evolving economy requires. The more important test is what students can do with their knowledge: how well they exercise judgement, adapt to unfamiliar situations and contribute across disciplines and organisations.

That test is becoming more demanding. Artificial intelligence is changing not only the skills employers need, but also how early-career professionals acquire them. Universities and businesses must therefore look beyond the familiar debate about whether graduates are 'job-ready'. The urgent question is whether we are preserving the experiences through which sound professional judgement is formed.

The development gap created by AI

Junior professionals have traditionally learnt through tasks such as conducting initial research, preparing draft analyses and observing how experienced colleagues challenge and improve their work. These assignments may appear routine, but they teach people how to test evidence, recognise weak assumptions and understand the consequences of a recommendation.

As AI automates some of this work, organisations may gain speed while inadvertently removing part of the early-career learning process. A graduate who can produce a polished answer quickly has not necessarily learnt how to determine whether that answer is reliable. If the underlying apprenticeship disappears, universities and employers will need to replace it deliberately.

This is why AI fluency cannot mean technical familiarity alone. Students must learn to examine the information behind an output, identify possible bias, protect confidential data and know when human experience or empathy should take precedence. Above all, they must understand that AI may inform a decision, but it does not remove human responsibility for the outcome.

Turning academic knowledge into judgement

Real organisational problems rarely arrive with complete information or one correct answer. They involve competing priorities, limited resources and effects that cross several functions. Case studies, simulations and live industry projects give students opportunities to make reasonable assumptions, defend their recommendations and revise them when circumstances change. This is how knowledge develops into judgement.

At The University of Manchester - Dubai, the Global Part-time MBA offers one example. Designed for experienced professionals who continue working while they study, it combines academic learning with practical business projects. Participants can apply new ideas to challenges in their organisations as they develop their leadership and decision-making skills. Through its Dubai branch, the programme also brings professionals from different industries together for in-person learning, allowing them to test their thinking against perspectives beyond their own workplaces .

Industry–academia collaboration deepens this process when it gives students a genuine problem to solve. A business can provide the brief, context and feedback; the university provides the space to investigate assumptions and consider alternatives. Manchester’s MBA consultancy projects, for example, allow groups of students to work as external consultants on live business challenges. Such experiences give students hands-on practice applying knowledge under the constraints they will encounter at work, while giving organisations access to fresh analysis .

Workplace exposure can deepen that process, but only when it has substance. A meaningful internship should offer more than observation. It should give the student an appropriate level of responsibility, a defined objective and feedback on both the result and the reasoning behind it. Mentoring adds another dimension by helping students understand how careers develop in practice: through uncertainty, mistakes and relationships as much as technical expertise.

Across our work with students, alumni and corporate partners in the Middle East, one lesson is consistent: employability cannot be added through a single workshop shortly before graduation. Communication, collaboration, problem-solving and adaptability must be practised throughout the learning experience and tested in settings that resemble the complexity of working life.

Three commitments for universities and employers

The response requires closer, more purposeful cooperation between education and business.

The University of Manchester – Dubai’s Strategic Talent Partnerships show how this can extend beyond individual projects. Working with organisations across the region, these partnerships connect access to part-time postgraduate study and executive education with career support, networking and continued development. Partners span sectors and include professional bodies as well as companies such as Forbes Middle East, Cisco and General Motors Middle East. Bringing education closer to organisations’ needs gives professionals more ways to develop as those needs change .

First, employers should redesign internships and graduate assignments around supervised decision-making. If AI performs the first draft, early-career employees still need to explain their assumptions, interrogate the output and receive feedback from experienced colleagues.

Second, universities should assess the reasoning process as well as the final product. Students should be expected to disclose how they used AI, verify its claims, consider alternatives and defend the decision they ultimately made.

Third, universities and employers should regularly identify which entry-level tasks are disappearing and what capabilities those tasks once developed. They can then create alternative experiences - live projects, simulations, mentoring or rotational assignments - before a skills gap becomes visible in the next generation of managers.

This partnership should extend beyond the transition into a first job. As roles continue to change, a qualification cannot mark the end of education. Universities must provide flexible routes back into learning, while employers create the time, support and incentives that allow people to keep developing.

From scale to capability

Record enrolment is an important achievement for the UAE and a strong indication of confidence in its higher-education ecosystem. The next phase is to convert that scale into lasting capability.

For universities, that means combining academic rigour with opportunities to apply knowledge and question technology. For employers, it means treating the development of early-career talent as an investment rather than assuming graduates will arrive fully formed. If both sides act now, the UAE's growing student population will be better prepared not simply for today's vacancies, but for careers and economic opportunities that are still taking shape.

Author: 
Randa Bessiso, Founding Director - Middle East, The University of Manchester