The Theory of Multiple Stupidities: Education, Technology and Organisation in Arabia

The Theory of Multiple Stupidities: Education, Technology and Organisation in Arabia

Data / Interview No. / Interview Line / Codes / Concepts / Theory
Professors look down at students and see them as nothing / 56 / 25 / Hierarchy / Moral Stupidity / Existence of Multiple Stupidities: Moral, Spatial and Administrative Stupidities
It is difficult, in reality, to appeal against professors / 85 / 15
Professors are like customers in restaurants – they are always right! / 37 / 3
Professors are given so much power, to the extent that they may unfairly fail students / 33 / 20
Professors do not bother to reply to students’ emails / 101 / 26
Professors make fun of students, including their way of walking, their accent, their weight, their height, their clothes, etc. / 104 / 1 / Disrespect
Professors use bad and insulting wording when calling students, such as O’ dog or O’ monkey, O’ duck, O’ bull, O’ shoe. / 107 / 5
Professors shout at students and kick them out of the class. / 36 / 4
Professors ask students for assignments, and when these students submit these assignments, these professors do not read them. / 121 / 27
Professors always assume that students lie all the time. / 123 / 2
Many of the support staff are absolutely rude – they come to work as if they are forced into it. / 11 / 7
Students call professors on their own phone in the morning, in the afternoon and even late at night. / 125 / 8
Professors always threaten students, for example, with the threat of deducting marks. / 120 / 11 / Threat
Announcement boards are full of threats, warnings and alerts, as if you are in a court. / 103 / 24
Signs are childishly configured to be culturally directive, with there being, for example, signs on which such a sentence as ‘I am proud of my traditional identity’ is written, and to which a picture of a Saudi man in full traditional outfit is attached. / 87 / 5
Some professors punish firmly students even if the mistakes are small and simple. / 12 / 12
Professors surprise students with exams without any notice, asking them to take exams right away / 111 / 3
Professors punish students for being late to the class by making them lose many marks / 105 / 14
Professors do not allow students to record lectures and punish students for establishing a bank of questions for the course. / 99 / 16 / Restriction
The university accepts sick certificates only from certain hospitals. / 91 / 17
Some professors do not appreciate the circumstances that made students miss their class. / 101 / 28
There are IT technicians and support staff available to professors, but not students. / 85 / 21
I am annoyed by professors and support staff being bullies / 95 / 2 / Abuse
Some professors ask new students of sport education to do sophisticated sport techniques that can be done only after long training and that can be done only by senior students. / 10 / 4
Students are asked to study for the exam from a book that consists of 600 pages. / 122 / 19
Some professors ask for assignments every week, thinking that a student has no courses except theirs. / 120 / 10
Professors give students so many deadlines beyond their ability to meet them. / 34 / 1
Professors ask students to recall information from the lecture three weeks ago, which is a very difficult task. / 106 / 20
Professors ask students to study from a book that is not available in bookstores and libraries. / 124 / 23
The length of lecture time is too long: two to three hours–professors surely lose students after 15 minutes. / 2 / 18
Students come to the class from far away, and then they realise that the professor is absent – why do professors not inform us if they cannot make it to the class? / 124 / 6
Some professors want their students to laugh at their silly jokes. / 100 / 15
Once Saudis gain their PhD, they normally become so stuck up and think that they have become a scholar who does not even need to bother to do any research any longer; hence, Saudi academics normally never publish anything after the completion of their doctorate. / 84 / 6
In Saudi Arabia, having a PhD is not the beginning of scholarship, but rather the beginning of prestige whereby PhD holders enjoy the great attention granted to them by the public and the media. / 102 / 9
In classrooms, chairs are fixed in rows, meaning that professors cannot use many of the teaching methods such as group discussion or group work. / 108 / 13 / Inconsideration of spatial aspects
The structure and equipment of classrooms force academics to teach in certain ways. / 3 / 28
Chairs in classrooms are designed only for right-handed people and for those who are of average weight and under / 80 / 22
The parking areas for students are exposed to sunshine (i.e. 50°), whereas for professors’ parking areas, there have been built roofs to provide shade from the sun. / 86 / 25
It is okay if professors come late to the class, but when students come late to the class, it is problematic—so unfair. / 118 / 24
Only Saudis can be managers in the public higher education sector, meaning that the exclusion of those non-Saudi academics who could be more qualified and can do better jobs than Saudi academics. This is a key and problematic issue given that the number of Saudi academics is limited whereas that of non-Saudis is large. Hence, almost all Saudi academics occupy more than one managerial position, for example being a head of department and dean at the same time. Assigning people to managerial positions not based on their qualification but rather based on their nationality. / 32 / 27 / Nationality-based discrimination
In order to be voluntarily followed, a leader should be intellectually, self-confidently, knowledgeably and creatively superior to “the led”, but in Saudi academia, one becomes a manager not based on intelligence, self-confidence, knowledge and creativity, but rather based on national considerations (here, whether one is a Saudi). / 13 / 7
Salaries for Saudis are different from those for non-Saudis; in favour of Saudis. / 119 / 26
Non-Saudis, unlike Saudis, have to give away their passport to the authorities on arrival, preventing them from travelling without permission. They cannot get this permission electronically. / 9 / 23
Universities give only non-Saudis allowances for housing, furniture, flying tickets home, etc. / 74 / 20
Universities have a list of recognised universities, and do not employ Saudi academics unless they have graduated from these universities; yet, Saudi universities do not mind employing non-Saudi academics who have graduated from universities that are not included in the list. / 82 / 28
Universities do not employ any Saudi that has a job in school, even if they have received a PhD; yet, they employ non-Saudis who work for schools. / 88 / 27
In medicine, Saudi universities do not recognise the Saudi board, even though the Saudi board is recognised in America and Canada. / 35 / 9
Saudis, unlike non-Saudis, are forced into wearing the traditional outfit. / 71 / 1
The prices of the college’s cafeteria are too high, although the norm is that they are lower since the customers are students / 70 / 5 / Low-income
Some professors leave classrooms without erasing what they have written on whiteboards, showing no consideration of the professors coming after them to classrooms. / 3 / 26
Some students do not want to work with anyone not from his tribe, family, region or even ideology, even if he is not clever. / 65 / 22
Students are forced into courses that have nothing to do with their major, therefore draining students’ energies by forcing them to take unrelated courses. / 68 / 12 / Arbitrariness
Students, who graduated from a high school of arts, are taught courses of science. / 109 / 7
Some professors assign grades for attendance, so a student loses grades if he is absent; this is even though regulations allow students to be absent four times. / 80 / 4
Students are taught computer software that is old, and now mobile applications have become available that are more practical and easier to use than this software. / 60 / 6
Some professors continue lecturing even through lecture time is over. / 40 / 14
Professors lie a lot; they tell students not to worry about the exam, and when the exam comes, it is very difficult. / 54 / 11 / Dishonesty
When professors are late to the class, they say that they were late because of a meeting, and yet there was actually no meeting. / 8 / 13
Some professors claim that they have not received students’ emails, although they did! / 110 / 25
Labs and classrooms in schools are better in terms of equipment than those in universities. / 53 / 16 / Lack of equipment and facilities / Spatial Stupidity
There are labs of educational technology yet without educational technologies. / 54 / 18
Students are asked for assignments that require the use of computers and the Internet, and yet the university has no computer rooms. / 50 / 17
Although the college has a department of sport education, there are no sport tools, equipment and facilities. / 39 / 9
There are no instructions, for example, concerning where toilets, classrooms and offices are. / 38 / 23
There are no rest areas for students, and there are no benches in corridors, so students feel that they have to sit on the ground even through their traditional outfit is white and therefore gets dirty easily. / 14 / 3
There are no walking areas in the parking areas. / 36 / 15
There are no buses inside the university even through it is very large, and the weather can be extreme. / 35 / 21
Students study tools that are not available at the university; yet, universities have made available many tools that students do not need. / 29 / 8
In the classroom, there is, at times, a table for professors, but at times there is no chair, so the professor has to steal a chair from our cafeteria. / 33 / 8
Wi-Fi is weak in classrooms. / 99 / 24
Air-conditioning is always on (i.e. cold), whether it is summer or winter. / 31 / 20 / Logistical inefficiency
Air-conditioning is centralised, and there is no switch per room for personal modification, and moreover there is no thermostat. / 39 / 24
I have a problem with the building having no fans to take in or out fresh air. / 30 / 19 / Non-ventilation
Windows are designed not to be opened; there is no ventilation, so oxygen is limited. / 28 / 10
Due to the limitation in oxygen and because the number of students in some classes is beyond the capacity of classrooms, I actually passed out one day. / 79 / 2
Course contents are so backwards and so out-of-date. / 24 / 25 / Logistically retarded
We are taught how to use educational technologies that are no longer in use in educational settings because they belong to the previous century! / 7 / 9
Although we live in the technology age, the use of mobile phones in the class is considered punishable behavior. / 20 / 26
The room in student accommodation is 4x1.5m, which is a funny shape. / 50 / 27 / Bad design
Each classroom has a stage for the professor; yet, the table for the professor is larger than the stage. / 18 / 1
Although lights have motion sensors, they are on all the time. / 15 / 28
There is no shaded boulevard between parking areas and colleges, so students have to walk under the sun. / 1 / 2
There is a small piece of wood attached on the right side of the chair, which students can use as a table. These mini-tables are too small to the extent that they are not enough for half-sized notebooks! / 89 / 4
Drinking-water fountains are located next to toilets, and the water coming from them is not clean. / 2 / 7
Parking areas have one single gate through which students can enter and exit, causing so much traffic and chaos. / 5 / 23
Classrooms are confusingly too similar and therefore should be in different colours, for example. / 13 / 10
The location of our previous college was in the middle of nowhere. / 14 / 15
Traffic police is just funny, closing certain streets and therefore causing huge traffic. / 97 / 20 / Traffic disorder
Traffic police forces students into entering the campus from certain gates, even if students live close to the other gates and even if their college is closer to the other gates. / 15 / 10
Traffic police gives a fine for parking in the wrong way, even though you have parked in the right way. / 48 / 28
There are a lot of [speed] bumps on streets, many of which are located randomly and are not highlighted. At times, bumps are located after the intersection, although they should be located before the intersection so that people slow down. / 15 / 1
Although the number of students is large, the mosque is small. / 18 / 6 / Lack of capacity
Although the number of students at the university is huge, the number of pool tables is limited. / 28 / 22
The registration system crashes when there are many visitors during the registration weeks. / 98 / 7
Wi-Fi is slow during the morning where there are many students connected. / 20 / 10
Maintenance is weak, resulting in dirty toilets, not having tissues in toilets etc. / 96 / 16 / Lack of consideration of spatial issues
Wall clocks are permanently broken. / 22 / 20
Many computers in computer labs are broken permanently. / 95 / 28
Some facilities are under maintenance permanently; so they are basically closed for good! / 50 / 5
Some doors of classrooms have long lost their handles, so students and professors have been struggling to get into classrooms. / 45 / 4
Some traffic lights are permanently off – so why are they there at the first place? / 9
It is insane that cold drinks in vending machines are not cold / 25 / 15
There are actually speakers in classrooms; yet without there being a plug to connect a computer or player to these speakers. So, no one knows how to connect them. So, these speakers are actually useless. / 29 / 20 / Technology waste
The university has a problem, making [available] technologies that are actually not needed. / 30 / 11
Universities have spent a considerable amount of money on Blackboard, even though there are other learning management systems that are available for free. / 16 / 16
Some professors waste the first 15 minutes of lecture time doing nothing. / 33 / 1 / Lack of time management skills / Administrative Stupidity
Academic journals in the Arab world are inefficient in the process of consideration for publication; taking forever. / 117 / 21
Students register 17–19 hours per semester. / 36 / 2
The start and end of the working days are made to be the same for the male and female campuses, therefore causing huge traffic – why don’t they make them slightly different? / 115 / 6 / Temporal disorganisation
There are no job descriptions, and there is a lack of instructions on how to implement a new policy or decision. / 52 / 7
The time of some lectures clashes with prayer times. / 78 / 9
Some classes are at night. / 40 / 20
Online registration starts at 6pm, which is funny timing. / 42 / 15
The first lecture of the day is at 7:30am, which is awful timing. / 6 / 16
In the first semester, the timetable for students is already set by the university; yet, there is a big gap between one lecture and another. / 39 / 4
The lunch break is short – not enough for having lunch given the queue is always too long. / 51 / 3
Some courses are available only in the first semester, perhaps because there are not professors; so, in this case, students are the victims. / 40 / 20
How come the library closes? The library should be open 24/7. / 116 / 5
For promotion, articles must be published in peer-reviewed journals. However, the university sends them out, again, to peer-reviewers, even though the articles are already published and therefore peer-reviewed. In this case, the university wastes money (since reviewers are paid), time (wasting the time of reviewers) and resources (through an irrational procedure). Although the articles are published in peer-reviewed journals, these reviewers may reject them. This shows duplicity. Although the articles are published in journals that have a high impact factor, these reviewers (who may have never published with journals that have impact factors) may reject them. The reviewers accept some articles and reject others. If the candidate has to resubmit because of rejection, he can only submit those articles that have been accepted in the first round. However, these articles, which have already been accepted in the first round, will be re-sent to other reviewers who may reject them. So, it is, again, duplicity, with articles being accepted in the first round and rejected in the second round. It is also, again, a waste of money (since reviewing articles in two rounds means that more reviewers will be paid), resources (through an irrational procedure) and time (making reviewers review articles that were already accepted in a previous round). / 17 / 12
Academics are given allowances for attending meetings and for using computers during their teaching practices (e.g. using Blackboard). / 94 / 6 / Money as an incentive
After the national financial challenge in 2016, all allowances were stopped, and consequently, many academics have stopped using computers and stopped attending meetings. Such a consequence suggests that using money as an incentive can turn out to be a stupid idea / 45 / 8
Some colleges have adopted the idea of standardising exams, meaning that all students are given the same exam even if their professors are different. / 112 / 19 / One-size-fits-all
Blackboard is a generic technology that is designed for all contexts. / 50 / 1
Saudi employees and students are forced into wearing the traditional outfit [i.e. a long white cloak]; yet the University has founded outdoor, on-the-go gyms and bikes, but how one can use these facilities if one has to wear the traditional outfit which is white and a cloak? / 30 / 13