Transcript Labib_Arafeh

The 2nd Regional Research Seminar of
the Arab States “ The Impact of
Globalization in Higher Education and
Research in the Arab States
UNESCO Rabat, May 25-26 2007
“The Impact of Globalization on the
Palestinian Higher Education”
Prof. Labib Arafeh,
Al-Quds University,
Palestine
[email protected]
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Outlines
• The Palestinian Higher Education System
• Rationales for Globalization;
• International Trends;
• The Palestinian HEIs Responses;
• Suggested Actions;
• National Challenges.
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The Palestinian Higher Education
System
• Reality:
– Occupation  Off campus / Underground
Teaching;
– Total immobility & confinement of labor force;
– Collapse of many economic sectors;
– Skyrocketing Unemployment;
– Poverty;
– ??
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•
Evolution of Palestinian Higher Education, HE:
– Palestinians have always relied on human
resource to survive & develop as a people & a
nation;
– Palestinian commitment to education defined its
self-value and was and still is a source of
collective security;
– Most HEIs came into being under extremely
adverse conditions as an act of commitment and at
the initiative of individuals and groups since
1971;
– HEIs have provided Palestinian students the
opportunity to study in Palestine;
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–
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Currently, 44 HEIs:
• 12 universities:
– 2 Private,
– 2 Governmental,
– 1 Open Education,
– 7 Public Non Profit, PNP.
• 32 Community & University Colleges
(governed by PNA & UNRWA, Private);
• Offer 100 different types of academic
programs at:
– 2-year (Associate) level,
– 4-6 year (under graduate) level, and
– 2-4 year (graduate) level;
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• Provide educational services to around 150k
students(05/06);
• Graduates were 17301 in 04/05;
• Academics (Faculty Members) are 5169
(05/06) :
• 4% are full Professors;
• 10% are Associate Professors;
• 38 % are Assistant Professors;
• 48% are Lecturers;
•  Student/FM = 29
Governance:
• 1978, A 24-member (HE stakeholders)
Council of Higher Education;
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• 1994, Ministry of Education & HE, MoEHE;
• 1998, Law of Higher Education;
• 1999, A 15-member Council for Research
(University’s Research Deans);
• 2001, A semi independent (working under
the umbrella of the MOHE) Accreditation &
Quality Assurance Commission.
Characteristics of Palestinian HE:
• Universities are young by international
standards;
• HEIs have responded to intense social pressures;
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• The majority of HEIs have started and remained
public non-profit institutions;
• Significant human and physical resources have
been placed in the HE sector, despite adverse
political and economic conditions;
• More than half of Palestinian university
graduates were educated at Local Universities.
• 4.5 % of all Palestinians are enrolled in HE;
• 1.7% of Palestinian GDP and 30% of all
education spending is devoted to HE, above
average by international standards;
• Spending on HE as a % of GDP (0.3%);
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05/06 76% (Arts, Humanities, & Education!
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04/05 70% (Arts, Humanities, & Education!
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 Number of students enrolled in HEIs will be
doubled in 2015
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 Spending on HE as a % of GDP (0.3%), the PNA total
budget (1.9%), are very low by international standards.
OECD Countries
Expenditure on HE
as % of GDP
Expenditure on HE as %
of expenditure on all
levels of education
Public expenditure on
HE as % of GDP
Public expenditure on
HE as % of total public
expenditure
Country Mean
1.33
26.3
1.3
3.0
Australia
1.59
29.5
1.2
3.6
Germany
1.04
22.0
1.1
2.3
Italy
0.84
20.6
0.8
1.6
Turkey
0.84
26.4
0.8
NA
United Kingdom
1.11
24.6
1.1
2.6
United States
2.29
37.9
1.3
NA
1.7
29.9
0.3
1.9
West Bank/Gaza
Expenditure and Public Expenditure on HE
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Rationale for Globalization
1. Refers to increasing global connectivity, integration
and interdependence in the economic, social, cultural,
technological, political, and ecological spheres;
2. A shift in our daily life circumstances. Changes in those
life circumstances are: Far-reaching, Comprehensive, &
Move rapidly with ease! (Moore’s Law: the power of
computers per unit cost doubles every 18 months);
3. Higher Education:
1. A key factor in the developing countries;
2. Recognized as the catalyst & essential driving force
for national social & economic development (Human
Resource Capacity): Creates, Disseminates &
applies all forms of knowledge;
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3. Major key elements of globalization:
1. The growing importance of the knowledge
society/economy;
2. The development of new trade agreements
which cover trade in education services;
3. The innovations related to ICT; and
4. The emphasis on the role of the market and
the market economy.
4. Rationales for Globalizations that resonates in HE:
1. Economic:
1. Financial-economic issues:
1. Emergence of worldwide production
markets as well as financial markets,
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2. Realization of a global common market,
based on the freedom of exchange of goods &
capital;
3. Cuts back in public funding to HEIs have
forced to find out new sources of funding;
4. It is clear that “A HE sector which meets the
needs of the economy in terms of Trained
people, Research, and Technology transfer”
is a central concern; as published by The
future of HE - UK dept. of Education & skills;
5. Characteristics of graduates: Expertise,
Strategic skills, Negotiating / Interpersonal
Skills can be advantageous throughout the
labor market.
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5. With the growth of emphasis on the market, a
new interest in the HEIs to collaborate closely
with business:
1.According to HE-Business Interaction
Survey (2001), showed that:
1. 51% of Universities attached to high
priority to the economic development in
the region (87% of the new universities
did so)
2.All had well-developed business strategy
3. 50% of new universities have more than
50% business representation in their
governing bodies;
2. Academic:
1. A desire to make money for the university from
international accomplishments;
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2.Internationalization was perceived as a means
of enhancing the quality of education &
research, & has been developed further by the
growth of the ICT;
3.International research projects, degree
offerings, exchange of academic staff &
students have become commonplace;
3. Culture:
1.The new culture is all-encompassing: Current
policies, UK, increasingly privilege the
modernization of public services;
2. The continuous monitoring and audit of
performance and quality;
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2.The cultural shift from a secrecy is marked with
the external review process;
3.The enhancement of quality & sharing of good
practice between HEIs, which can meet the
demands for information of stakeholders:
governments, Students, Employers, Parents, etc.;
4.The emphasis on the effective teaching, and the
academic is still central to the success of the
HEIs;
5.The growth demand for access to HE in recent
years has been a phenomenal; an estimate of
100M qualified students who will not be able
to find places in the conventional HEIs, by
2010;
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6. The demand for HE is fuelled by the:
1. ICT,
2. Knowledge economy,
2. Urging of governments who see it as
essential to produce a highly skilled
workforce to meet the needs of the
international labor market;
3. Political:
1. A response to support the process of
reconstruction, nation-building (Learning
Society) & economic & democratic reform
through cooperation, capacity building,
knowledge transfer & the education of local
intellectuals to modern and international
standards;LA UNESCO, 25-26/05/07 Rabat
2. The response to globalization has been &
continues to be perceived in a drive by
governments to reform the national HE
systems to deliver as the ends they need;
4. Steering change in HE:
1. Joined-up Thinking  A term being used to
characterize attempts to achieve greater
integration & cooperation between educational,
social, and economic policies;
2. Student-focussed or Client-focussed Policies:
1. Stakeholders: employers, social partners,
and other economic & social actors with
vital interest in HE outcomes;
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3. Influence and Control: HE provision based upon
client demand and a sense that HEI is ‘the place to
be’ is in important senses out of control.
Governments can seek to influence the volume,
speed and composition of change. How can such
influence be exercised?
4. Changing Courses and Curricula: To realize the
full benefits of the expansion & diversification,
courses & curricula must be a central concern for
policy-makers:
1. Relevance to labor market needs;
2. Promote independent study & Academic
Staff ability to adapt their teaching,
supervision, and assessment;
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3.Such adaptation could be facilitated by using
additional resources, ICT, and favorably
maintaining the staff-student ratio;
5. Changing Teaching & Learning:
1.Technical & Pedagogical Training to Academic
Staff;
2.The Quality of Teaching may be measured by
the:
1. Care with which the material was assembled;
2. Number of computer-based (ICT &
Multimedia, audiovisual aids) used in the
presentation;
3. Ability of students to recall, understand, &
make use of the exact details of what was said.
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6. Trends in Europe:
1. A general shift towards more market-orientation;
2. UK Binary system (traditional / academic
universities & vocationally-oriented institutions) has
been abolished, & universities have to compete for
students & research funds;
3. Netherlands’ HEIs have gained more autonomy in
managing themselves and in working with external
constituencies;
4. Germany & Austria Universities have found
themselves faced with performance-based funding;
5. New role of the State from control to supervision:
1. New Buffer organizations (Boards, Councils);
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2.Evaluative measures have been introduced;
6. Goals of most of HEIs efforts have been to:
1. Reach a satisfactory level of efficiency &
effectiveness, which implies increasing quality
& improving productivity,
2. Regain public legitimacy, credibility and trust
by producing well-prepared graduates for the
job market, research publications &
involvement in technology transfer;
7. More funds have been devoted to support
corporate partnerships between Universities &
business;
8. US - European Universities’ Strategic alliances
have become popular;
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9. Private Universities are now being accredited;
10. Teaching & research is being offered by other
bodies: consultancies, media, IT companies, etc.;
11. Harmonization of curricula;
1. Bologna declaration is based on objectives:
1. Comparable degrees;
2. ECTS (Credit System);
3. Promotion of mobility;
4. Quality Assurance & common patterns of
HE;
12. Impacts of IT & Internet (Virtual Universities,
Internet-based programs, etc.) have brought
innovation to teaching & research;
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Trends Impacting Faculty roles
1. Academics define the nature and quality of a HEI
through their teaching, research, & other activities;
2. Academic profession can appear to be held together by
some overarching beliefs & values that explain the
meaning & value of their work to themselves and
others:
1. The main purpose of a HEI and its academics is
to: Preserve, Create / Discover, and Transmit
knowledge & understanding through teaching and
research;
2. Additional beliefs and values encompass:
1. The commitment to serve society;
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2. The commitment to intellectual integrity &
fairness;
3. The necessity of academic freedom and
autonomy in doing academic work.
3. Academic profession appears highly fragmented
& differentiated by discipline, institutional
mission, organizational structures and national
systems;
4. To meet the demands of the 21st century
globalization, the increasing economic role of
knowledge, IT and reduced public funding, etc.,
HEIs world wide, are undergoing reforms
regarding their Missions, & Better use of their
intellectual resources (Research & Teaching);
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5. To accomplish this, HEIs must adopt an approach
that places emphasis on:
1. Teams,
2. Networks,
3. Connectivity, and
4. Individual personal autonomy and discipline
research;
6. The growing area of Transdisciplinary patterns of
new knowledge. These arrangements reconfigure
academics into units that recognize research &
training around the search for solutions to complex
systems: Academics may be permanently
reassigned to new groups, or split their
identification between their home discipline and
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these new configuration;
7. The emerging media of ICT will:
1. Provide new ways to engage in all modes of
communication,
2. Make clearer their impacts on the nature & status
of knowledge itself as well as teaching &
learning;
8. Thus, the academics, traditional producers of
knowledge, will:
1. Continue to be a rich intellectual & educational
resource,
2. Increasingly be the consumers of knowledge
produced by their traditional consumers:
Students, alumni, business & industry, others.
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The Palestinian HE Responses
• Education and R&D are under pressures and have
capitalized on the opportunities of globalizations;
– Lack of powerful & mature industry,
– Thus, R&D is poor;
• Foreign programs equip local students with knowledge,
skills, transmit foreign values and attitudes:
– We have bad experience, and the decision was taken
 Not allowed (A Threat);
• Research University:
– Not feasible;
• International Cooperation (An Opportunity): Most of
HEIs are involved in International, mainly European
mobility & research projects;
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•
Quality Assurance (An Opportunity):
– A 5 – year semi governmental Accreditation &
Quality Assurance Commission:
• Develops a national & institutional quality
assurance systems;
• Evaluates all running Academic programs;
• Self-Evaluates all HEIs  QOU is
accomplished;
• A completive 10M $ Quality Improvement
Fund  4M$ is allocated;
• Approves new academic programs & HEIs;
• Publicizes accredited academic programs &
HEIs;
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• Cuts in public funding: (A Threat)
– Heavily dependent upon foreign support;
– If available, distributed in fixed %!
– HEIs Heavily depend on students’ tuition fees 
Covers (50-70)% of the HEIs running costs;
 Most of HEIs are managing somehow their
finances;
• The exponential growth in ICT (An Opportunity):
– ICT is heavily adopted to overcome the mobility
obstacles;
– Most of HEIs offer their programs based on ICT as
an enhancement tool;
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– Research trends in ICT related topics are
increasingly growing;
• A need to satisfy the demand for HE & providing
access to HE (An Opportunity to HEIs BUT A
Threat to Quality):
– Accepting more students BUT not increasing their
Capacity  Imbalance in F/S ratio;
– Offering new customized multidisciplinary
academic programs;
• Private HEIs  All restricted to offer only needed
non repetitive academic programs;
• Knowledge Society (An Opportunity)  Badly
Needed;
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Suggested Actions:
•
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Essentially, HEIs must adopt good corporate
governance in terms of focusing on:
– Restructuring exercises:
• Which in some case saw the disappearance of
whether well-established or not departments
faculties, which did not have the “adequate”
student enrolment,
• The need to innovate and create relevant multi
discipline programs which are sensitive to
current and future needs of both students and
employers (to what extent this has been
achieved is a different issue altogether); and
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•
–
–
–
–
–
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The optimization of resources – human
resources (academic and nonacademic),
laboratories and equipment.
Core functions, & Optimization of resources,
Adopt and implement moneysaving measures,
Improve on university industry relationship and
enhance partnership,
Commercialize research as well as to make their
products (both in terms of academic programs and
the graduate) more marketable and relevant;
Undertake initiatives to review, strategize and
reprioritize their missions and objectives;
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–
Generate their own income to meet their
operational budget, and
– Have to intensify research collaboration with
partners abroad;
– Promote constructing Knowledge Societies:
• Significant changes in the global environment
will bear heavily:
– Functions,
– Role,
– Shape & mode of operation of HE.
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National Overarching Challenges
• Maintaining and developing a highly competent
and competitive HE Provision & System under
prolonged military occupation: Curtailment of
mobility for students and staff locally, nationally,
regionally and internationally;
• Very negative impact on carrying out research.
• Physical destruction and attacks.
• Drop in income, increase in poverty levels, and
inability of students to pay fees, & HEIs to pay
salaries;
• Developing a Relevant, Accessible, Efficient,
Sustainable and Accountable system.
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• Relevant System:
– Fit with national priority needs;
– Quality of programs;
– Periodical assessment of programs, in terms of
content and relevance.
– Quality of student intake;
– Quality of faculty members;
– Quality of teaching and research facilities;
– Ability to conduct technically applied research.
• Accessible System:
– Meeting increasing demand: HE as a right or an
opportunity, etc.
– Size of student intake vs. HEI Capacity;
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Trends of Students Enrollment at Universities &
Community Colleges (in thousands), 1985-1999
Projection of High School Graduates 2000/01 To
2004/2005
70000
70000
60000
50000
40000
High School
Graduates
50000
Students
30000
20000
10000
Universities
Colleges
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
1998
1987
1986
0
1985
Students
60000
40000
Tawjihi Holders
30000
20000
Qualified
Applicants
10000
0
2000/01
2001/02
2002/03
2003/04
2004/05
– Admission policies.
Academic Year
– Synergy with general education.
• Efficient System:
– Student-faculty ratios.
– Management structure.
– Public payroll: inability to recruit qualified staff.
– New blood.
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– HEMIS.
– Coordination and exchange among HEIs &
Private Sector Nationally, Regionally, Globally;
– Employment potential of graduates.
– Fields of study are not responsive to broader labor
force needs;
• Sustainable System:
– Level of fees and operational costs;
– Commercialize products & generate income
strategy;
– Relation between funding & accreditation of
programs;
• Accountable System:
– Participation of stakeholders;
– Coordination between MoEHE and HEIs.
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• Greater competition for resources, manpower and
markets opportunities;
• HEIs’ graduates:
– In a global commodity and borderless access
education, there is a need to ensure that the
quality of education that a HEI provides,
matches those of “competitors” globally;
– Ranking / Comparing HEIs intranationally as
well as regionally / international benchmarks
become necessary;
• Promote using of ICT as an enhancement tool to
improve the quality of teaching & learning;
• Promote the Culture of Quality Assurance &
Enhancements, Program/Institutional Evaluation
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• Conclusion:
– There is an urgent need for all HEIs, world wide,
to reposition themselves in the light of the
challenges of the 21st century that include the
phenomenon of globalization and good corporate
governance;
– The various reforms & initiative must be designed
to facilitate the drive towards:
• Promoting research at HEIs,
• Providing quality programs, &
• Promoting internationalization;
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– Despite great vital obstacles over its relatively
short, three-decade history, Palestinian HEIs
have demonstrated:
• Capacity to survive & even Grow in adverse
and unstable conditions;
• A systematic process for accrediting academic
programs, as well as HEIs has been
established;
• Research & Quality Improvement Funds are
distributed to Faculty members & HEIs basing
on
criteria
including:
Competitiveness,
Relevance, etc.
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Thanking you
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