Author(s): Khaled A. Al Falah, Kamran Ahmed Siddiqui
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the mission statements of Saudi universities. Mission statements of Saudi universities were collected from their official websites (N=44). Content analysis was used as the major data analysis technique. Saudi Arabia is going through a massive transformation, but mission statements of Saudi universities are not coherent with this transformation exercise. The paper also provides numerous recommendations to academia and policy makers. Saudi universities need to adopt a more market oriented approach and mention their business model in their mission statements. They need to mention concern for their alumni and faculty and reflect more technology and changing philosophical orientations in their mission statements. The major recommendation from this research is the development of separate criteria to evaluate mission statements for academic institutions. Limitation of this research include conclusions are drawn based on material found in publicly available official websites and content analyses used in this research has been criticized as highly subjective in nature.