As exporters of oil in the Middle East and throughout the world, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) must address the following challenges in the area of development and economic growth: (1) an increasingly integrated world economy in which technology and knowledge will be paramount; (2) the need to diversify its economy from a natural resource-based economy that will inevitably decline in the century ahead; and (3) the challenge of keeping the state as a political community relevant to its citizens. An examination of the UAE's situation against the backdrop of economic growth and educational issues in small countries such as Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Yemen, and Singapore reveals that the responses of societies in countries with hydrocarbon-based economies to inflows of revenues are much more complicated and diversified than many authors have previously argued. The examination further reveals that, for states such as the UAE, a viable economic future is a race against time that can only be won with an integrated triangle consisting of educational policies, state actions, and maximization of economic opportunities. The key to the UAE's future depends on continued development and maintenance of a knowledge-based economy and continual reappraisal of the fundamental and traditional relationship between work, learning, and education. (MN)