Near and Middle Eastern Journal of Research in Education - Volume 2006, Issue 1

This study assesses the reasons that contributed to the rise of ‘Academic Apartheid’ in Arab higher educational institutions, by dwelling on their failure in overcoming alienation from indigenous epistemology, emancipating education from its colonial past, and trudging into the modern information age. Furthermore, the study alludes to the tenuous position of the Arab academic/research in rediscovering the epistemological framework of their indigenous world. The study concludes that the present institutional ‘clanocratic’ approaches to academic administration have ruinous effects on the performance of Arab academia including the arrest of transition toward modernization.