If you’ve ever been on LinkedIn, you’ve likely seen many a post celebrating an online certification — or even made one yourself — from either LinkedIn itself or platforms like Coursera. Usually a platform for job seekers to showcase their experience and skillset, LinkedIn has become a hodgepodge of musings, new job announcements, and those certificates.

A lot of these tend to have an AI or digital skill-linked theme. People not only want to show they are serious about their career growth, but that they also care about growing their skillsets, and that they remain relevant in what is increasingly a competitive market. This is especially the case in a place like the Gulf, where competition for talent between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is fierce, and AI-linked skills are becoming more in demand.

This reliance on continuous learning and microcredentials has become a key tool in job seekers’ arsenal as they look for new jobs, Coursera’s President and CEO Greg Hart (LinkedIn) tells EnterpriseAM UAE. In the UAE, in particular, demand for GenAI courses, microcredentials, and job-ready skills is outpacing that of the wider region, with an overwhelming, Hart said.

By the numbers: The company now counts around 1.5 mn registered learners in the UAE, up 23% y-o-y in 2025, with over 62k GenAI enrollments recorded in 2025. UAE learners mostly consist of early-career and mid-career professionals trying to remain competitive in a fast-changing job market, he noted, adding that the age demographic is older than the broader regional base, with the median age being 36, with 86% of all Coursera learners come to the platform to advance their careers.

A job market under pressure is accelerating the shift. Cooper Fitch has been reporting steadily rising competition that outpaces job creation, as well as a preference for more UAE-experience talent as opposed to those who are new to the market, which makes it harder for people looking for jobs in the UAE — with less experience in their CV — to land jobs.

Microcredentials are now increasingly viewed as a bonus on employees’ CVs, supplementing traditional educational degrees as new skillsets — like AI — emerge, Hart explained. Some 97% of UAE employers say they are more likely to hire a candidate with a microcredential, the same share of students who say they want to earn one. “It’s one of the best ways for people past their university days to demonstrate that they have the skills that are needed today,” Hart added.

The structure of learning itself is changing. People are no longer viewing education as something that’s front-loaded to their university years, Hart said. Mid-career and late-career professionals are increasingly using Coursera to advance their skillsets, especially those linked to the digital world and GenAI.

This shift has pushed Coursera to orient the entire platform around “skills pathways,” using the company’s AI-driven career graph to map courses to specific job roles across IT, data, GenAI and software engineering. Each pathway includes verified assessments — effectively proof-of-skill — that workers can share with employers.

The UAE’s government is also prioritizing initiatives to help upskill workers to advance its ambitious AI targets, which is helping boost this wave, Hart said. The country also decided in May to embed AI into its public-school curriculum from kindergarten to grade 12 starting next year, covering technical foundations, ethics, data, and algorithms — something Hart described as “far more forward-looking” than what he sees in the US.

Those policy moves are translating into enterprise partnerships. Coursera now works with over 100 organizations in the UAE alone, including Dubai Police, Adnoc, Emirates NBD, Etisalat, Edge Group, Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority, governmental departments, and universities such as Ajman University. Regionally, its collaboration with UNDP and the MBRF aims to equip 10 mn learners across Arab states with future-ready skills by 2030.

In the broader region: The Middle East is now one of the company’s fastest-growing markets globally, with overall learner growth in the region outpacing global averages, Hart told us. Across MENA, upskilling demand is surging at double-digit rates. The Middle East and Africa logged over 1 mn enrollments on Coursera in 2025, averaging one enrollment per minute — up from one every five minutes in 2023, according to data Coursera shared with EnterpriseAM UAE. Of this, some 261k enrolled in GenAI courses across the region this year, while c. 1.5 mn enrolled in STEM-related courses.

For learners across MENA, the message is increasingly clear: adapt early, or risk being left behind. The convergence of demographic trends, national AI policies, and employer pressure is creating a feedback loop that is driving the fastest adoption rates Coursera has ever seen outside the US. For employers, microcredentials are becoming a critical filter. For governments, upskilling pipelines are becoming economic policy. And for platforms like Coursera, the region has become the testbed for what a skills-first economy looks like in practice.

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