RIYADH: An official at the National Commission for Academic Accreditation (NCAA) and Assessment has said that failure rates at Saudi universities are “high across the board”, but particularly in government-run universities. Zuhair Abdul Jabbar, Assistant Secretary General for Studies and Development at the NCAA, told Al-Hayat Arabic daily that students' average cumulative grades were “low” and warned that the problem would be “difficult to solve”. “It's not easy, and it will take a long time,” Abdul Jabbar said, adding that the issues were due to “failures in human capabilities”. “That doesn't mean we should make concessions in quality to improve student success,” he said. “But the higher the success rates the more it goes to show that the university has made efforts to provide students with sufficient academic backing.” He said that the purpose of accreditation is the “quest for improvement to programs to raise the standard of quality”. “When the situation doesn't reach the point of definitively denying accreditation, specific recommendations are made upon accreditation to tackle areas of deficiency, and annual reports are sent on the implementation of those recommendations,” he said. “Once the period of accreditation has ended, if those concerns have not been addressed, then that might affect the renewal of accreditation.” Abdul Jabbar said that the NCAA is responsible for ensuring quality in higher education institutions, and that it has in its first five years relied on foreign experts in its tasks. “That's because of the lack of local experts to evaluate universities' progress,” he said. Abdul Jabbar was speaking following a forum in Riyadh on quality in higher education.
