Universities Through the Looking Glass : Benchmarking University Governance to Enable Higher Education Modernization in MENA
This benchmarking exercise provided some important lessons on the tool itself and its capacity to: 1) identify strengths and weaknesses at individual institutions; 2) identify trends at the national level; 3) identify trends and practices by type o...
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| Language: | English en_US |
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Washington, DC
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2012/03/16280459/universities-through-looking-glass-benchmarking-university-governance-enable-higher-education-modernization-mena http://hdl.handle.net/10986/12535 |
| Summary: | This benchmarking exercise provided some
important lessons on the tool itself and its capacity to: 1)
identify strengths and weaknesses at individual
institutions; 2) identify trends at the national level; 3)
identify trends and practices by type of institution; and 4)
generate interest to initiate reforms at the institutional,
national, and regional levels. It is clear from this first
round of data collection (and the subsequent increased
demand and interest from institutions to participate), that
universities are seeking to find meaningful ways to compare
themselves with other institutions around the world, but
more importantly, that they are genuinely interested in
finding ways of improving their performance. Countries in
the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region are going
through an important political transformation, and this is
likely to impact their economic and social development for
the next few years. The January 2011 revolution in Tunisia
and Egypt's uprising transformed the political and
social environments in both countries. In all MENA
countries, recovery will depend on the capacity to develop
new markets and to employ fiscal prudence. Universities play
a key role in all societies because they are directly
involved in generating new knowledge and because they teach
and form young people to become leaders, entrepreneurs,
scientists, and professionals in all fields of knowledge. In
today's world, knowledge generation has replaced
capital assets as the key ingredient for economic growth.
Universities need to innovate to provide the kind of
education that will enable their graduates to be competitive
and to contribute to the economic and social growth of their countries. |
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