His Excellency Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research affirmed the Ministry’s keenness to encourage Government and private universities to offer academic programs to meet the needs of the labor market in the State, and to link it to sustainable development projects, the Ministry also urges these institutions to support the Government and the private sector with qualified national cadres in various specialized areas.

The Minister pointed out that the Ministry is in the process of reopening the specialty of Physical Education program in the UAE University, which was frozen in 2000 because of low demand, with some changes with the start of the next academic year 2015-2016. This came as the Minister’s written response to the question of Dr. Mona Al Bahar member of the Federal National Council, on opening the colleges of Physical Education in public universities, and he added that 220 citizens graduated from this specialty, who are working in different sectors related to physical education and sports.

The Minister said that the new program aims to develop the health and physical education, the Ministry plans to promote and educate students to this program through academic advising, to draw their attention to the importance of these disciplines, and the Ministry aims to mainstream sports and health education in government and private universities, to activate and train national cadres in this important field, which may spur in the future the creation of colleges specializing in physical education and sports at the State level.