University education in the Arab world is facing a profound structural crisis that cannot be reduced to inadequate funding or deficiencies in infrastructure. Rather, it extends to the very core of the philosophy upon which education itself is founded. In many of its models, the university has deviated from its historical role as an institution for the production of knowledge and the cultivation of critical thinking, becoming instead a space for the accumulation of information and the reproduction of dominant modes of thought without questioning or deconstruction.

The prevailing educational model is based on memorization and rote learning, elevating compliance at the expense of inquiry. This creates a clear epistemic gap between possessing information and truly understanding it. Instead of being a partner in the production of knowledge, the student is reduced to a passive recipient, whose competence is measured by the ability to recall rather than to analyze. The result is the graduation of generations who hold academic degrees without genuine mastery of critical thinking skills or intellectual independence, rendering education a formal procedure stripped of its formative and educational impact.

This crisis deepens when the university intersects with a cultural and media environment inclined toward superficiality and the rapid consumption of knowledge. As a result, the culture of dialogue weakens, difference is marginalized, and ready-made certainties are reproduced instead of being critically examined. In this way, the university loses its enlightenment role and shifts from a space of free debate to an institution of epistemic regulation that reproduces the prevailing order rather than critiquing it.

Furthermore, the separation between technical education and the humanities and philosophical sciences contributes to the formation of a limited, functional mindset—one that excels at performing tasks but is unable to question purpose or meaning. Reforming university education cannot be achieved merely by updating curricula and tools; it requires a reconstruction of the educational philosophy itself, one that places critical thinking at the heart of the educational process and restores the university’s role as a cultivator of minds rather than a repository of information, and as a driving force for genuine intellectual and civilizational renewal.

Prof. Dr. Ayed Mohammed Al-Zahrani

Secretary-General of the Swiss Association of Arab Academics and Scientists