Vol. 8 No. 8 (2012): Scientific Journal Referee Issue: 8

Dear researcher/reader

I had intended to write the editorial of this issue to talk about the encyclopedic mentality that emerged in one of its topics, but I changed my mind and chose to write about another topic related to the outputs of higher education: university and postgraduate studies, and postgraduate studies in particular, and its relationship to society.

In recent years, Yemeni society has witnessed an increasing demand for postgraduate programs: master's and doctoral degrees, and this is normal and bodes well. I can say that the continued aspiration towards postgraduate studies will make the numbers of graduates comparable to the outputs of primary university education (bachelor’s), and this is a good thing, but unfortunately its societal return is very limited.

The societal limitation of postgraduate studies becomes clear if we reflect on the nature of investment in it, as it is very weak, if not non-existent. Community investment in education decreases as the educational level rises, according to the nature of the society. In education, it is individual and societal at the same time.

Based on this investment base, the outputs of postgraduate studies burden the tribal rural community and serve the scientific industrial community. If these outputs are highly efficient and capable and have a demand from the industrial society, then they leave their rural society and go to the industrial society that most needs them (brain drain). But if her qualification is limited and she only has a certificate or an academic title, then she constitutes a political embarrassment to the society in which she lives, in the event that she does not accommodate them functionally. It is also an unjustified financial burden, if he absorbed it and included it in his service institutions, as it takes more than it gives.

Someone might say that this talk is weak, inaccurate, and unscientific, and I refer this speaker to review the higher education literature on the one hand, and to take a look at the situation of PhD holders in our Yemeni society who gather from time to time in front of the Presidency of the Republic, the Prime Minister and the House of Representatives, demanding By absorbing them without even thinking for a moment if they were really needed. I also wish him to study the reality of Yemeni universities, which, over more than three decades, have not benefited Yemeni society in one thing, other than multiplying the outputs that the traditional local market based on services cannot absorb and increasing the political embarrassment of the state.

Finally, I hope and call on fellow researchers to devote their efforts to studying the societal return of Yemeni universities. If we receive these studies, I promise here to make the next issue of this journal devoted to the publication of these studies. I am very confident that the results of these studies that they will carry out, if conducted, will be a milestone in the political and economic life of our Yemeni society, in which we all hope for its advancement and development.

Deputy Editor-in-Chief