Spotlight
The case for lifelong learning
Dr Karim Seghir, Chancellor of Ajman University, explores how universities can build research excellence and support learners throughout their careers as technology and economic priorities continue to evolve.
15 October 2026
Over the past year, how have your institution’s vision and mission adapted, and what have been your key priorities?
Our mission remains firmly rooted in advancing knowledge, developing talent and serving society. What continues to evolve is how we translate that mission into lasting academic and research excellence.
Ajman University’s transition to a non-profit institution in 2023 established an important foundation for this direction. It strengthened our ability to direct institutional resources towards our academic mission and to make decisions with a long-term horizon. For the past year, we have been building on that foundation by translating institutional independence into sustained investment in research, talent and the quality of education.
Three priorities have been particularly important. The first is advancing research in fields that will shape the future. Our AED 5 million endowed Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, established with Khatib & Alami, and our new PhD in Artificial Intelligence reflect a commitment to developing advanced expertise and contributing to knowledge creation, rather than simply adopting technologies developed elsewhere.
The second is strengthening the alignment between academic education and the evolving needs of society and the economy. We pursue this through engagement with industry and professional stakeholders, alongside Masar Career Excellence, which supports students in translating their academic experience into career opportunities. This enables us to remain responsive to changing professional demands while preserving the academic depth and intellectual rigour that define a world-class education.
The third is embedding lifelong learning into the University’s broader mission, recognising that higher education must serve not only those entering their professions, but also those navigating new responsibilities, changing industries and emerging fields of knowledge. Through Executive Education, we are extending the University’s contribution across the course of a person’s professional life.
These are not separate initiatives. They reflect a single institutional priority: building capabilities whose value compounds over time. The measure of our progress is not simply what we establish today, but what these investments enable our graduates, researchers and partners to achieve – and how they strengthen the society it serves to achieve in the years ahead.
The skills agenda remains an important factor for universities and students. Where have those skills changed, and how is your university leading the conversation?
The fundamental question is no longer simply what graduates know, but how well they can exercise judgement when knowledge is abundant, technology is powerful, and the answers are not always clear.
Artificial intelligence makes this particularly urgent. Machines can increasingly generate content, analsze information, and recommend courses of action. But the ability to assess the reliability of an answer, recognise its limitations, understand its implications and accept responsibility for a decision remains profoundly important. Higher education must prepare people not only to use new technologies, but to think independently in an environment increasingly shaped by them.
This requires us to reconsider the relationship between academic knowledge and its application. Students need rigorous disciplinary foundations, but they must also learn to test ideas, work through uncertainty and apply their knowledge in settings where decisions have consequences. Our Financial Markets Lab is one practical expression of this principle. The same philosophy applies to clinical education, where professional competence depends on sound judgement as well as technical skills.
In this environment, digital fluency must be accompanied by critical evaluation: graduates should know when to use AI, when to question its output, and when human judgement must take precedence.
There is also a structural implication. If knowledge and professional practice continue to evolve, the university's responsibility cannot end at graduation. Our work in undergraduate education, doctoral research and Executive Education reflects a broader commitment to learning at different stages of life and professional development.
I believe universities must move beyond treating employability as the final measure of educational success. Our greater responsibility is to develop people who can remain intellectually capable, professionally relevant and ethically grounded as the world around them changes.
What is a challenge in your region that universities alone cannot solve, and which partnership areas can?
The challenge is converting economic ambition into enduring capability. The UAE and the wider region are investing significantly in technological advancement, economic diversification and innovation. Yet investment alone does not guarantee that the knowledge, talent and institutional capacity required to sustain progress will develop at the same pace.
This is where the relationship between government, industry and universities becomes strategically important. Governments can establish direction and create the conditions for investment. Industry can identify emerging needs and bring practical problems into focus. Universities contribute independent research, advanced education and the development of talent. The opportunity lies in aligning these contributions around shared, long-term objectives.
That requires a different conception of partnership. Success should not be measured by the number of agreements signed, but by the capabilities those agreements create: stronger research, better-prepared graduates, more effective knowledge transfer and a workforce able to support new economic priorities.
Our relationship with Ajman Bank illustrates how a partnership can develop over time, extending from educational support to scholarships, applied learning through the Financial Markets Lab, and financial literacy initiatives for the wider community. Our endowed AI Chair with Khatib & Alami represents another approach, establishing a long-term framework for academic research and specialised teaching.
The wider lesson is that the most valuable partnerships are designed to endure beyond individual projects and immediate institutional interests. If we can make such collaboration a structural feature of regional development, we will strengthen not only individual institutions, but the collective capacity of our economies to innovate and adapt.
Where are the greatest opportunities for Arab region universities, and how can institutions take advantage of them?
The greatest opportunity is to move from importing knowledge to originating it. The expansion of higher education across the Arab region has created a substantial foundation of institutions, talent and educational opportunity. The next challenge is to translate that foundation into greater research depth, original contributions to global knowledge and stronger capacity to address the region's own priorities.
This requires focus and patience. No university can be exceptional in every field. Institutions must identify where their academic strengths, research talent and long-term ambitions align, then invest consistently enough to build genuine distinction. The objective should not be to replicate the priorities of leading universities elsewhere, but to develop capabilities that are both internationally competitive and relevant to the societies in which they operate.
It also requires us to think beyond institutional boundaries. Research talent and expertise are distributed across universities and countries; the challenge is to connect them in ways that create opportunities greater than any institution could achieve independently.
The India–Arab Universities Presidents’ Summit, hosted by Ajman University in February 2026, was an effort to advance that principle. The resulting Ajman Declaration established a framework for cooperation, followed by the launch of the India–Arab University 10+10 Cooperation Program and the India–Arab University Research and Mobility Network, alongside a monitoring committee to support implementation.
The significance lies in moving from dialogue towards structured cooperation. Such initiatives must ultimately be judged by the research undertaken, the talent developed and the opportunities created through them.
For Arab universities, international recognition is valuable, but it should be a consequence of substantive achievement rather than an end in itself. Our ambition should be to contribute knowledge that matters globally while strengthening the societies and economies that sustain us.
If you could set the direction for all of higher education, what is the one area you would direct the sector towards?
I would direct higher education towards a fundamental shift in how we understand its responsibility: the university must become a lifelong partner in human capability, rather than an institution people turn to primarily at the beginning of their careers.
The pace of technological and economic change is challenging the assumption that education can be completed in one phase of life. The implications extend beyond updating professional skills. People will need to revisit their knowledge, move between fields and prepare for responsibilities that may not yet exist. Universities must be equipped to support that evolution, drawing on their academic depth, research and industry relationships to offer meaningful learning at different stages of life.
This calls for a more integrated model, in which undergraduate and postgraduate education, professional development, and executive learning are connected by a shared commitment to intellectual growth. It also requires universities to rethink how they engage with employers, public institutions, and learners well beyond graduation.
The strategic opportunity is to make the university relevant across a person's lifetime, without reducing education to a series of short-term training interventions. Our responsibility is not simply to prepare people for their first professional opportunity, but to sustain their capacity to learn, contribute, and adapt throughout their lives.