The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of academic advising on changing or maintaining majors in university degrees. It is also a goal of the study to determine which semester students change their majors and whether advising contributes to that change. Through this correlational study, the researchers explored students’ perceptions about the academic advising they received and the relationship of its absence on students’ major change. The participants were 1725 undergraduate students from all year levels. The survey used to collect the data for this study is: the Influences on Choice of Major survey. Based on the findings, it was found that university advisors have a very poor effect on students’ decisions to select their majors as 45.6% of the 1725 participants indicated no influence of advising in their survey answers. Whereas career advancement opportunities, students’ interests, and job opportunities indicate a strong effect on their majors’ selections, as they score the highest means of 3.76, 3.73, and 3.64, respectively. In addition, findings show that students are most likely changing their majors in their second year, and specifically in the second semester. Second year major change scored 36.9% in the second semester and 30.9% in the first semester. More importantly, results indicate that there is a positive significant correlation between college advisors and major change in the second year (p = 0.000). It is to researchers’ understanding based on the findings that when students receive enough academic advising in the first year of study, and this advising continues steadily into the next year, the probability of students changing their majors decreases greatly.

This study aimed to examine the level of leadership and managerial skill development among department managers in the UAE Ministry of Education and to explore how these skills contribute to predicting the effectiveness of educational management within a context of ongoing digital and institutional transformation. The study was grounded in an integrative framework combining transformational leadership, strategic management, and digital leadership, and adopted a descriptive survey approach. Data were collected through a validated questionnaire administered to a stratified random sample of 300 department managers. The results indicated that the overall level of leadership and managerial skill development was moderate across the three study domains. No statistically significant differences were found based on gender or academic qualification. The findings also revealed a strong positive correlation between leadership and managerial skills. Regression analysis further showed that these skills significantly predict the effectiveness of educational management, explaining 51% of the variance. These findings suggest that existing professional frameworks provide an acceptable foundation for leadership development; however, they still require strengthening in areas such as data-driven decision-making, change management, and leadership responsive to digital transformation. The study offers a field-based contribution within the UAE context and highlights the importance of integrating leadership and managerial skills to support effective educational reform. Nevertheless, the results should be interpreted considering the study's reliance on self-reported data and the use of a single-item overall measure to assess the effectiveness of educational management.

This study has multifaceted objectives. It investigated the safety level of the learning environment at Al-Ain University from the perceptive of its students, it sought to identify any physical, social, and psychological obstacles that may affect the students' sense of safety in their learning environment. It explored the role of demographic factors, such as age, gender, academic program and year of study in shaping these perceptions. This study adopted a quantitative descriptive research method and used a survey to collect data through a web-based questionnaire. The total sample number consisted of 89 undergraduate and graduate students at the College of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education at the university. The findings revealed that the students' perception of the safety level of the currently existing learning environment at Al-Ain University is high and that they do not experience any significant obstacles whether physical, social or psychological that could negatively impact their feeling of safety at the university premises. Moreover, the findings revealed statistically significant differences in the students' perceptions based on age with older students tending to have different perspectives compared to younger students. However, there were no statistically significant differences reported due to the student's gender, academic program, and year of study. These findings provide important insights for university administrators and policymakers aiming to enhance student well-being. Institutions can further improve the perceived safety and overall quality of the learning environment by addressing the specific needs of different age groups.

The purpose of this study is to determine how students’ motivation for learning influences faculty members' academic performance. This study employed a comparative analytical descriptive methodology to ascertain the correlation between the academic performance of faculty members and the motivation of students to learn. The study's aims and research problem defined the targeted study population consisting of faculty members from many universities in the United Arab Emirates. We obtained the data using social survey method. Snowball sampling was used to select the study sample which consisted of 130 faculty members. Calculations were made for means, standard deviations, variance testing using the ANOVA test and a Pearson correlation coefficient. The findings showed a statistically significant correlation between faculty members' performance and students' motivation. According to the experience variable, the results showed statistically significant differences in the sample members' mean scores which were attributable to the impact of students' motivation on faculty members' performance. The findings showed that faculty members' performance is enhanced by the motivation of their students to learn. The recommendations stemming from this study advocate for several key actions to improve academic performance and foster a conducive learning environment. An important recommendation among them is the implementation of faculty-specific training programs regularly. One of the most important of these recommendations is the call for the implementation of regular training courses tailored for faculty members.