HCT Plans Expansion of Cert Training Academies From Four to 10

What happened

The Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT) plans to expand the professional training academies run by its Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training, after a record year of student graduations that included more than 6,700 graduates at the UAE's largest university graduation ceremony.

The plan follows the inaugural In^X Next 2026, which marked 30 years of the centre, known as Cert, and its rebranding as In^X Education. Chief executive Khalid Alhammadi told The National that Cert currently runs four academies, covering National Initiatives, Language and Communication, AI and Emerging Technology, and Assessment. The number is planned to rise to 10 in less than a year.

The academies are designed to deliver specialised programmes shaped around the needs and ambitions of individual organisations, so that their workforces gain relevant skills. Since it was established, Cert has trained more than 105,000 Emiratis, and In^X Education intends to extend its training capability across the wider region.

Why it matters

For leaders, the significant part of this story is not the graduation numbers but the shift in how skills are delivered. An academy model that is built around a particular organisation's operating priorities, and that includes a dedicated AI and Emerging Technology track, treats capability-building as an ongoing part of transformation rather than a one-off course. That matters because AI adoption tends to stall when frontline and middle-management teams are not equipped to use new tools in their day-to-day work.

The move also points to a broader change in how organisations might approach workforce readiness. Expanding from four academies to 10 within a year suggests that demand for tailored, organisation-specific training is growing, and that training providers are being asked to act more like partners in operating-model change than as suppliers of generic courses.

By the numbers

• 6,700+ graduates received degrees at the UAE's largest university graduation ceremony, according to the reporting.
• 105,000+ Emiratis have been trained by Cert since its establishment.
• 30 years marked by Cert, the HCT Centre of Excellence for Applied Research and Training, at In^X Next 2026.
• Four to 10 academies: the current number of Cert academies and the planned number within less than a year.

The Renascence take

Most coverage will read this as an education milestone, but the more useful signal for CX and transformation leaders is the design choice behind it. Academies that are shaped around specific organisational needs are a service-design decision: they assume that learning succeeds when it is embedded in the workflows, language and goals of the people taking it.

Most organisations still buy training as if it were a product, when the real customer is the employee trying to change how they work on a Tuesday afternoon. The behavioural principle at play is that habits form in context, so a programme that sits apart from daily tasks rarely survives contact with them. If you are planning an AI rollout, treat your learning function as part of the experience design, measure whether people change behaviour rather than whether they completed a module, and ask which academy in your own organisation you would need to build first.