No More University Jobs for Expats in Saudi Arabia – MOE

No more hiring of expats in Saudi Universities

After 100% suadization in many sectors, the government is now heading towards the education sector. The new rule that has to be followed by all government universities is that they shall hire Saudi teachers only. This means that foreigners cannot provide their services in the teaching sector.

The educational sector under this policy, for now, is limited towards the government universities. However, a government university can only hire an expatriate if there are no available qualified Saudi teachers.

This means that expatriates can only be hired in a government university as a faculty member only if no qualified Saudi is available. The Ministry of Education has made it clear that all universities shall follow with the given set of instructions.

These government universities shall update on local newspapers and their official websites for job availability for the qualified Saudis.

Expatriates will no longer be hired in the academic faculties of government universities unless there are no qualified Saudis to take up the job. So as soon universities find a qualified Saudi, they shall replace him/her with the expat teacher.

It will improve the Saudi employment rate

The ministry of education has also briefed the universities to contact the Ministry of Civil Service. In this way, they will get to know that whether a qualified Saudi is on the employment waiting lists or not. The list is with the ministry of civil services which briefs that a Saudi with a certain specialization is waiting to get employed. 

The ministry ensures that these regulations will enable the universities to hire non-Saudi qualified teachers for their academic faculty only when they go through a complete procedure of finding a Saudi qualified teacher. So a non-Saudi teacher can only be hired if actually needed, otherwise, a Saudi teacher shall replace him.

Mubarak Al-Osaimi who is the spokesman for the Ministry of Education said that a program has been initiated by the Saudi universities where our lectures have been sent to renowned universities of the world. These lectures have been sent there to upgrade their qualifications as they are undertaking specialized studies there. When they return with successful specialization, they will be ready to undertake a job in universities of Saudi Arabia.

So the non-Saudi teachers have been hired only for a short time period of 1 year. As soon as our nationals return, they will be given the jobs. These expat teachers are hired on a contract basis, which is renewable. The universities will have the option of dispensing these expats teachers if they do not want to renew their contracts.

Source: Saudi Gazette