A degree worth staying for

A friend and I recently had a long conversation about her plans to finish a master’s degree. She had the ambition, the experience and a clear idea of where she wanted her career to go. What she could not find in Oman was the right programme.
Her experience was not unusual. Another friend flew to Europe for a degree she could not pursue here. The discussion among many working professionals is not that Oman has no postgraduate education. Sultan Qaboos University and several private institutions offer master’s and doctoral programmes. The concern is choice: when the specialisation is highly specific, interdisciplinary or designed around working professionals, the options can still feel limited.
That should interest us economically as much as academically.
The countries that built strong education brands: Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany and France -- understood that universities are more than classrooms. International students pay tuition, rent homes, use transport, support cafés and shops, and bring visiting families. Britain recorded £32.3 billion in education-related exports and transnational education revenue in 2022. Yet the greater dividend is knowledge: research partnerships, new businesses, skilled workers and relationships that often survive long after graduation.
The UAE has brought that model much closer to home. Dubai’s 41 private higher-education institutions enrolled 42,026 students in 2024–25. International students made up 35 per cent of the total, after their numbers rose 29 per cent in one year. International campuses such as Birmingham, Heriot-Watt and Middlesex offer postgraduate study in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and bioinformatics to media, psychology and construction management. Dubai is not merely selling degrees; it is building an ecosystem around talent.
Oman has a compelling proposition of its own: safety, cultural depth, a bilingual environment, an attractive quality of life and industries that can become living laboratories. Imagine internationally competitive master’s programmes in sustainable tourism, water security, fisheries, logistics, heritage conservation, renewable energy, mining, food security, Arabic digital media and desert urbanism, designed with employers and offered in flexible formats.
This would give Omanis and long-term residents more reasons to remain, while drawing students from the GCC, East Africa, South Asia and beyond. Campuses would gain diversity; local businesses would gain customers; employers would gain specialised talent; and communities would gain new ideas. The risks—quality control, housing pressure and graduates whose skills do not match jobs—are real, so expansion must be selective and properly regulated.
Oman already funds postgraduate study and places knowledge and research within Vision 2040. The next step may be to make Oman itself a destination for that investment.
Should we continue sending ambitious students elsewhere, or build more of the programmes that persuade them and others to come here? Is this an investment Oman should now make?