Challenging the Assumption of a Western Phenomenon: Academic Entitlement in Saudi Arabia

Academic entitlement (AE) is increasingly associated with problematic behaviors and attitudes, including student incivility and endorsement of cheating. As research on this context-specific form of entitlement increases, no one has yet explored the rates of occurrence outside of North America. To investigate whether students at North American universities are alone in their endorsement of academically entitled beliefs and behaviors, we administered a bidimensional (entitled expectations and externalized responsibility) AE measure to university students in Saudi Arabia and the United States. Contrary to expectations, the Saudi Arabian students, particularly the women, reported on this measure higher levels of AE than the American students. However, in the Saudi sample, academic entitlement was associated with self-esteem and not with narcissism or independent self-construal. While these results challenge the assumptions that AE is an exclusive Western educational phenomenon, they also raise questions about the potentially different meaning of AE in non-Western cultures and the validity and reliability of AE measurement.