"HCT is a disaster ... a very dark and sad institution"

Suede is very happy to present the latest correspondence from an extremely disgruntled former HCT employee. Any further comment from me would be superfluous, so just read and ... Enjoy!

Dear Suede 

Would you please post my story on your website. I had an awful experience, which fortunately ended in May 2016, at the Abu Dhabi HCT for Women.  

I was recruited to teach on the MBA program, only to arrive and find out that ... there was no MBA program! It had been suspended in 2015! So I had no role, no office, no desk, and no courses to teach. What I did face, though, was confusion and pure hate from other staff.    

From my perspective, HCT is a disaster, and a  very dark and sad institution.      

HCT is originally a vocational school – two years certification for the UAE high school system's weakest graduates who are not academic and have limited abilities.  Its administration, structure and educational learning model is based on some past Australian institutional example from the 1970s.  It seems that it worked well in the UAE for a period of time and produced graduates that the labor market accepted. However, after three decades, HCT grew to 17 different campuses all over the UAE and currently grants bachelor and master degrees among other certifications which totally different than what it is originally designed for. 

Due to these vast changes beyond its mandate, HCT is currently a seriously disfunctional institution for both vocational or higher educational colleges (BA, MA, .etc). Its graduates are very weak and the UAE labor market is generally avoiding hiring them. In the last two years, the central accreditation committee (CAC) of the Ministry of Higher education, who is in charge of evaluating all higher educational institutions in the UAE, hassuspended all the HCT master degrees’ programs and gave HCT a one-year final warning to fix all the major institutional problems that were pointed out by the committee for all the bachelor degrees’ programs, or it will be also suspended by the end of 2016/2017 academic year. 

Several serious violations have been reported and pointed out to be fixed by the CAC, such as the faculty's minimum qualifications should be Ph.D., not bachelor or master degrees, which is currently the majority among the current faculty.  Furthermore, the CAC demanded a complete review of all courses’ curriculum as they did not see any changes since 1980s.  Also, the CAC requested a reduction in the number of weekly teaching loads which is currently 20+ hours of contact teaching, and must be in the specific research and teaching specialization of the faculty member.  Currently, there are no specific specializations in each field of study, and there is no academic research by the faculty to speak about. 

Actually, HCT is known in the UAE as the lowest and weakest level of educational institution in the country. The students are the weakest high school graduates or rejects from other higher educational institutions, and the faculty are mostly under qualified and mainly at the end of their career - so they are desperate to have a job at any price and play alone. In short, everyone pretends: the faculty pretend to teach, the students pretend to learn, and some dubious curve is utilized to up students’ grades and pass almost everyone. That is exactly what happened in 2015 by the deliberate intervention of the upper management, and faculty are currently required and directed by the upper management to do so as part of their duties.  

The HCT is very sad place and I would not recommend it to any one with good qualifications, specially with a decent Ph.D.  There is no academic freedom or academic environment at all. You will be at a disadvantage and everyone without a doctorate will hate you and conspire against you to make you look bad and fail. I personally know of several Ph.D. qualified faculty who are actively searching for other employment opportunities in the UAE, or will just resign soon and go home.  In my opinion, you would be better off flipping burgers at MacDonald’s restaurants than teaching very lazy students, totally dependent on cheating and with low morale, and totally stupid management.  

Run away and stay away …. this is my advice to everyone applying to work at HCT.   

HCT SUCKS.    

HCT USE NO EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS!

The message below was sent to me earlier this week, and reveals that HCT regularly and continually flout the UAE laws regarding the issuing of employment contracts. This news will, of course, be nothing novel to many current HCT staff, but will be a complete surprise to new recruits.

My thanks go out to the 'deep throat' at Central Services who has taken the brave decision to publish this information. I am releasing it below almost exactly as it was written.

Enjoy!

HCT USE NO EMPLOYMENT CONTRACTS

It tends to surprise people when I tell them that the Higher Colleges of Technology do not use employment contracts. It is perhaps the largest government educational institution in the UAE and one of the oldest.  I was told by a longer term employee that they used to use employment contracts. However, I have worked for HCT for more than 7 years, and I have never seen an employment contract; and I have heard the same story from other employees.

For the last decade or so they have been using something titled an Employment Offer Letter, which is usually offered for signature several months before the new employment period begins. It is usually one or two pages long, has a few elements that might be in a regular contract, and then makes a reference to the HCT policies and practices on the HCT website as though they are an extension of the employment offer. I have been told by two other government bodies and a legal expert in the UAE that the HCT Employment Offer Letter is not equal to an employment contract underUAE law.

There is one problem with those HCT policies and practices, of course.  A prospective new employee has no idea what the HCT policies and practices say at all, since they are not included with the employment offer and he/she will never have access to it until starting work and getting set up with portal access by the IT department. Even then, finding them in the HCT portal is from difficult to impossible. Another problem is that there are frequent changes to the policies and practices reported by HR in global emails. This is fine, but since HCT considers them to be an extension of their employment agreements, the employee agreement in effect is not static but can change in any way at any time.

While this situation is probably not legal in other countries, it seems to be an acceptable practice in the UAE for the public sector.  Yet if an organization in the private sector does this and the labor department finds out about it, the result is court and penalties.  The only overt governmental body that HCT HR has as oversight is the spineless and compromising Federal Authority of Human Resources, which does very little or anything, even when problems are officially brought to their attention. The reputation this body has is that of an agency that lacks the power to give it any teeth, but from experience dealing with them I think they just don't have the will to bite.

My opinion is that the labor department should have authority over all UAE employers including the government and semi-independent entities such as HCT.