This paper asks the question: Has higher educational reform empowered national citizens and emboldened them to participate in the construction of the knowledge economy? All of the GCC countries have attempted to change their higher education system to improve the educational outcomes of university and college graduates. Western institutions have been invited to establish branch campuses, regulations have been changed to permit the establishment of private institutions; rulers have aggressively attempted to restructure the educational practices of public universities; expatriate students have been allowed to pursue college degrees offered by the new universities and colleges of the regions; and English has become a much more important part of tertiary education. All of these reforms have been made in reaction to what was perceived as the poor performance of the state university systems constructed after independence. The critique is that these institutions have become too bureaucratic and failed to promote the sort of critical thinking that would allow national citizens to join the dynamic private sectors being established in many of the region’s cities. At the same time, these changes have led critics to argue that by de-emphasizing the use of Arabic and imposing Western educational standards that some national citizens are further alienated from the economic life of their country. This paper adopts a comparative perspective in three ways. First, it contrasts the different models of educational reform in the region and argues that these different approaches will have different effects on the national population. Second, the paper notes that the national population is not a homogeneous block. Higher educational reform has been linked to educational reform at the secondary and primary school level that has tended to promote the establishment of non-public language schools to which more wealthy national citizens send their students. Thus higher educational reform might empower some national citizens while dis-empowering others. Third, the paper argues that higher educational reform cannot by itself change the labor market behavior of employers and employees without a change in economic incentives. This suggests that the opening of higher education to expatriate residents might further disadvantage national citizens.