Higher Education Privatization in Kuwait

Broadly speaking, privatization can be defined as shifting the responsibility of delivering the services that were once provided by the public sector to private institutions, thus decreasing the role of the state and increasing the role of the market in meeting social needs. It is the act of reducing the role of the state and increasing the role of the market in providing goods and services. The idea of privatization is not a modern innovation. The utilization of the private sector to satisfy people’s need is not a recent practice. What is new in the contemporary context, however, is the contemporary deliberate use of privatization as a tool to improve the functions of the government. Over the last few decades, under the influence of the ideology of neoliberalism, the principles of privatization have been introduced into policy debate as a method to improve the performance of the public sector and to provide alternative financial resources in providing public services.

In their recent manifestations, privatization measures were initially introduced by the United Kingdom and the United States in 1979 and 1980, respectively. Palley (2004) has argued that, ‘the elections of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 can be viewed as inaugurating the formal period of neoliberal economic policy dominance’ (p. 6), and the trend towards privatization initiated, with the practice of selling government assets to the private sector. Since then the contemporary political utilization of the concept has been promoted broadly through a ‘neoliberal imaginary’ (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010), which advocates economic liberalization, deregulation, free trade, and open markets. Neoliberalism supports the privatization of public institutions, deregulation, and the enhancement of the role of the private sector generally in modern societies. It involves reducing state control, based on the ideological belief that unregulated market capitalism will deliver growth and widespread prosperity for all.

Undoubtedly, privatization has been promoted and implemented widely in various public arenas around the world, including higher education systems. At present it is rare to find any countries without a version of private higher education. Even rich welfarist countries such as the Arab Gulf States have witnessed a boom in private higher education over the past two decades. The focus of this book is on its introduction in higher education in the state of Kuwait.

Apart from the long-existing private American universities in Egypt, Lebanon, and Jordan since the 1950s, Levy (2009) has noted that in most Arab regions private higher education ‘is just beginning to register significant enrolment’ (p. 14). He also noted that ‘The Arab Middle East stands out as the region in which [private higher education] emergence is mostly planned and promoted by governments, often in partnership with European and United States universities [in addition to a number of Australian universities] as well as with occasional World Bank support’ (p. 14). He notes that the emergence of private education has become a widespread reality in a relatively short period of time, covering the great majority of countries in the region (United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia, to name few).

Private higher education can also be classified based on its function, ownership, and student population. Levy (2011) talks about identity institutions (religious and beyond), elite/semi elite institutions, and demand-absorbing/non-elite institutions. Several factors have shaped the diverse structure of private higher education. Ownership, source of funds, and regulations are three factors that can, to a large extent, identify the nature and the function of any private institution. Thus, the variation in the implementation of privatization across different countries is based on several factors that define the nature of privatization.

Generally speaking, declining public budgets for higher education, and the lack of public funds to meet the rapidly growing demand for higher education, have greatly contributed to the rapid growth of privatization, although growing national and international market forces have also played a role. The costly nature of higher education, to a great extent, has stimulated governments’ policy choices to privatize their higher education and abandon a commitment to its ‘publicness’. From a theoretical perspective, the classification of the benefits provided by higher education for individuals and society as a whole has been considered in terms of a contrast between a public good and a private good. Advocates of privatization regard higher education as a private good, since they argue that higher education offers individual returns. That is to say, individuals should be expected to pay for their own education since they are the main beneficiaries of this education. Opponents of privatization, on the other hand, view higher education as a public good, and appeal to the positive benefits that higher education provides to the society as a whole.

In recent years, the advocates of private higher education have also relied upon other rationales. They have argued that rapid technological developments have placed a huge financial burden on the higher education sector when it comes to preparing human resources for the knowledge economy. It is claimed that the public sector is mostly incapable of coping with these rapid changes due to an inherent lack of flexibility and excess of bureaucracy.

Since rapid technological developments have changed the nature of higher education, technologically intensive higher education requires extensive resources that most governments either lack or prefer not to spend on, thereby making some degree of privatization both desirable and perhaps even inevitable.

What this short discussion suggests is that financial pressure is often the primary explanation for the adoption of privatization in higher education around the world. On this account, privatization is introduced as a way of reducing the requirements from the public budget for the higher education sector. This reduction is rendered necessary due to the increased demand that exceeds the public provision in many countries. This explanation, however, does not apply to the Kuwaiti context. Kuwait is one of the richest countries in the world (Kuwait’s GDP per capita is about US$40,000), mainly due to its oil wealth, with a small population of citizens that roughly exceeds one million. Thus, Kuwait has no financial limitations that would result in any shortages in the budget required to expand the public supply for higher education. Nor does it face any financial crises that would place it under the control of the international organizations that promote privatization policies through coercive strategies such as structural adjustment programs. Nevertheless, privatization has also been implemented in Kuwait. The Kuwaiti government has followed the global trend in seeking to privatize its system of higher education. The question arises then as to why, how, and in what form privatization has been implemented in Kuwait.