UK bodies delivering education in Saudi: ‘The reality was more difficult than we expected’

British education institutes are finding that the promise of growth in Saudi Arabia by delivering multimillion pound projects is far more challenging than they initially bargained for.

With one of the world’s largest youth population – more than 60 per cent of the Saudi population is aged the under of 30 – and a King seeking to reform the country at a staggering pace, projects in the Kingdom seemed to be a lucrative venture. However, a British college overseeing $347 million projects is finding that “the reality [was] more difficult than [we] expected”.

Lincoln College is one of many UK education institutes that had banked its future in growth within Saudi education. With UK government funding drying up, UK education providers jumped at the chance to take part in programmes in Saudi by sharing their expertise overseas.

UK institutions set about establishing their new colleges in the region with the aim of furthering vocational education and training in Saudi Arabia for men and women. Within two years, grave problems were being reported by colleges taking part.

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According to the Further Education (FE), “the premier news service for the further education and skills sector in England”, projects in Saudi were struggling to recruit students and some colleges in the region were being forced to close; some UK providers were said to be in damage control.

Lincoln College had opted to stick it out and reap the potential reward. According to the Financial Times almost half of its annual revenue comes from Saudi contracts and 300 staff members are in the Kingdom. The school is hoping that its expansion into the Kingdom will help secure its future in the UK — although it has been a bumpy road.

Although the college has been offering programmes in places like China, their main focus has been Saudi Arabia. The idea according to the FT was to train a youthful population suffering from high levels of unemployment and take advantage of the Kingdom’s reform set out by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman.

Lincoln College ended up winning large contracts worth $347 million and was hoping to reinvest the money in its UK campuses. “The reality,” according to James Foster, who oversees Lincoln’s international business, “was more difficult than we expected.”

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With companies being paid on the basis of attendance, fewer students had been a major stumbling block, Foster told the FT. Others opted not to take the risk. Pearsons, the largest education company, according to the FT, decided to pull out from its ventures in Saudi Arabia altogether.

Further criticism followed. The companies were accused of getting into a market they did not understand and attempting to train Saudi students for jobs that were typically done by foreign workers. Lincoln College had stayed the course but not without taking multimillion pound loans, but only because it had been more exposed than other British colleges which left the institute with no other option.

A combination of factors, including restructuring of its project has allowed Lincoln College to turn a corner.  The college is said to be pondering further investment in the Kingdom including a possible driving school for women.