Degrees may soon be a thing of the past – embrace ‘skills passports’ instead
The year 2025 has confirmed a fundamental shift in how economies compete. Across the Gulf, bold investments in AI and digital infrastructure have accelerated national transformation agendas. Yet, the most consequential disruption is not technological alone. It lies in how quickly jobs are evolving and how effectively people can keep pace.
Globally, the skills required for AI-exposed roles are evolving about 66 per cent faster than in less-exposed roles, according to the global audit firm PwC. This reality is reshaping long-held assumptions about productivity and competitiveness. Academic degrees, while still valuable, no longer guarantee relevance in a labour market where skills are constantly refreshed. The nations that will lead in the AI era are those where people can acquire new capabilities quickly, adapt instinctively and apply knowledge with confidence.
Evidence of this transformation can be seen in how people across the region are responding. In the UAE, GenAI enrolments on our online education platform Coursera grew 48 per cent year over year in 2025 – equivalent to one new enrolment every seven minutes. At the same time, around 13 per cent of the country’s workforce is actively developing new skills through online learning.
These signals suggest something important. Rather than reacting to disruption after it arrives, the workforce is preparing for change in advance. Learning is becoming a proactive strategy rather than a remedial one.
Across the Gulf, the same pattern is emerging, underscoring that this is not a country-specific trend but a regional one. In Saudi Arabia, initiatives such as the national Skills Week and large-scale skills accelerator programs reflect a deliberate effort to broaden technical competence and strengthen human potential. Together, these developments point to the emergence of a region where lifelong learning is not simply encouraged, but increasingly embedded into economic planning.
This rise in learning velocity, however, presents a paradox. People are acquiring new skills faster than ever, while the mechanisms used to recognise those skills continue to rely on traditional signals.
The nations that will lead in the AI era are those where people can acquire new capabilities quickly
Technical capabilities now have an estimated half-life of two to three years. The World Economic Forum’s 2025 Future of Jobs report projects that nearly 46 per cent of core job skills in the Middle East and North Africa will change by 2030. Traditional credentials were not designed to keep pace with this cycle. As a result, workers often hold valuable, up-to-date knowledge that employers struggle to verify, leading to mismatches that limit mobility and slow productivity gains.
The idea of a unified digital skills passport – a kind of verified record of individuals capabilities, recognised in a specific economic region like the Gulf, or even more widely – could offer a practical way forward. By tracking and validating skills as they are acquired, and making them portable across roles, sectors and borders, such a system allows talent to move more confidently into high-growth fields like AI, cybersecurity, green energy and digital health.
Insights from LinkedIn’s Economic Graph report suggest that stronger skills recognition could expand AI talent pools more than eightfold. Beyond increasing mobility, a skills passport would reduce structural mismatches in the labour market by giving employers a clear view of what people can actually do. In this way, learning becomes more than effort. It becomes visible, assessable and actionable value.
Importantly, the foundations to support this shift already exist. In the UAE, major technology and AI infrastructure investments – such as Microsoft’s multiyear cloud and AI expansion, with more than $7.3 billion committed through 2025 – signal sustained capital flowing into the AI economy. The country also consistently ranks among the leading Arab nations for AI readiness.
These are not abstract indicators. They create an environment where talent can advance faster because experimentation, innovation and continuous skill acquisition are actively supported.
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 reinforces the same principle. Through its Human Capability Development Programme, lifelong learning is positioned as a central pillar of national progress, ensuring that skills development becomes an ongoing journey rather than a one-time intervention.
The next phase is to connect learning momentum, skills recognition and workforce policy into a coherent framework that helps to strengthen the regional economy. A national or regional skills passport could form the backbone of this shift. Regularly updated skills categories, aligned with the evolving needs of the labour market, would help guide learners toward capabilities with rising value. And hiring practices that prioritise demonstrated skill over academic pedigree would encourage more accurate talent matching.
If the 2010s were defined by infrastructure and the 2020s by rapid AI adoption, the 2030s will be shaped by how quickly people can learn, unlearn and adapt. The Gulf has the ambition, demographic momentum and policy frameworks to build one of the world’s first fast-learning economies.
In such an environment, every new skill becomes visible, mobile and consequential. The question is no longer whether the region can compete in the AI era – but how quickly its people can acquire the skills that will define it.