Islamic Banking and Finance education: A comparative study of Saudi Arabia and the UK

Educational programmes related to IBF (Islamic Banking and Finance) are necessary to be introduced in universities in order to produce experts and professionals for this sector. Saudi Arabia has played an important role in its development and same path is now being followed by the United Kingdom. Although IBF related degrees have good job market but there is still shortage of Human Resources in this field. This paper not only examines the IBF courses in Saudi Arabia and the UK but also tries to explain the status of these universities where the courses are taught. The intention of this paper is to explain the job market and strategies of universities in Saudi Arabia while comparing it with the UK. The main purpose of this paper is to examine the current status of Islamic banking educational institutions in both the countries, so that to mark one of them as benchmark for spreading and boosting the Islamic finance related courses and fill the gap of human resources in this field.