Palestinian Tertiary Education Strategy

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Palestinian Tertiary Education Strategy

• Challenges and Responses
• Khalil Nakhleh
• (abusama_at_palnet.com)

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Beginnings

• So far, we have been nibbling at the margins of
  strategic planning for the Palestinian Tertiary
  Education system. We have been unable to go
  beyond that. The main challenge is why?
• CHE absence of an enforceability authority

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Beginnings2

• In 1997, a diagnostic analytic base document, for
  a national tertiary education strategy, titled,
  Rationalization Plan for the Higher Education
  Sector.
• In 1999, translating the Rationalization Plan
  into strategic directionsDirection for
  Palestinian Higher Education A Vision for the
  Future.

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Beginnings..3

• The Vision focused on three issues
• Tertiary education and the future needs of
  Palestinian society, and the need for a long-term
  strategy
• Licensing and accreditation
• Economics of tertiary education

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Beginnings .4

• 1- The need for a long-term strategy
• A Strategy Steering Committee was set-up, and
  produced, in 2001, Draft Zero for a Strategy,
  which lacked a basis for action.
• 2- Licensing and accreditation
• An Accreditation and Quality Assurance Commission
  (AQAC) was established in 2002.
• 3- Economics of tertiary education
• a Financing Strategy document was prepared in
  August 2002.

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Where Are We Now?

• Draft Zero, titled Palestinian Higher
  Education Strategy, is being revised and
  transformed, into a Strategic Action Plan for
  Palestinian Tertiary Education.
• The Strategic Action Plan document, under
  preparation, is being formulated and structured
  around seven cardinal questions, affecting the
  entire fabric of Tertiary Education.

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Seven cardinal Questions

• 1- What is the most feasible institutional
  structure for Palestinian tertiary education?
• 2- Which specializations and academic programs
  should it include?
• 3- What is the most feasible governance system
  for Palestinian tertiary education?
• 4- What are the most feasible criteria for
  recruiting and retaining students?

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Seven cardinal Questions

• 5- What are the most feasible criteria for
  recruiting, developing, and retaining teaching
  and research staff?
• 6- What is the most feasible system for improving
  and assuring the quality of teaching and
  research?
• 7- What is the most feasible approach for
  reforming the financing and management of
  Palestinian tertiary education?

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What are we doing to go forward?

• what challenges confront us?

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Going Forward

• On each of the seven cardinal questions, the
  Strategic Action Plan proposes necessary
  strategic interventions, which Palestinian
  decision makers, with the appropriate competency,
  are asked to take.

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Going Forward ..2

• With the financial and technical assistance from
  UNESCO, the World Bank, the European Commission,
  the Ford Foundation, and others, a potentially
  promising structure for quality assurance and
  assessment has been set up.

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Going Forward ..3

• The setting up, in 2001, of the Student Revolving
  Loan Fund (SRLF), as the main component of
  student aid, is intended to provide support,
  through loans, to needy students, in order to
  offset the cost of tertiary education.

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Going Forward 4

• The Strategic Action Plan builds on what was
  accomplished in previous venues over the last
  thirty years, but is not constrained by it, and,
  in many respects, it goes beyond it

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Going Forward ..5

• In all cases, however, it is endeavoring to
  respond to the daunting challenges confronting
  Palestinian tertiary education at all levels
  from the systemic to the political, economic and
  cultural environments.

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CHALLENGES

• The Strategy is Proposing to Break them

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Challenge -1

• The main and overriding challenge has to do with
  the margin allowed for the Palestinians, who live
  under a prolonged and oppressive Israeli military
  occupation system, to establish a formal
  Palestinian system of education, anchored in a
  positive and rejuvenated Palestinian cultural and
  historical identity, which is capable of training
  Palestinian future generations to create
  critical, relevant, scientific, and humanistic
  knowledge, which empowers them to develop their
  own society and economy.

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Challenge -2

• The main Palestinian challenge facing tertiary
  education is to consider it a paramount concern,
  and to commit all necessary political and
  financial will and resources for its development.
  

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Challenge -3

• How to develop the system where the pupil becomes
  the center of the learning process, and an active
  partner in the creation of knowledge
• Where the focus is shifted from heavily academic
  into actual and relevant applications
• Where assessment and on-going review become an
  inherent part of the culture of learning and
  educating.

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Challenge -4

• How to ensure that the educational system becomes
  the producer of modern and relevant knowledge and
  skills, and not just a consumer of knowledge,
  where formal academic degrees become the end of
  it all.

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Challenge - 5

• The need for continuous faculty development
  continuous evaluation of academic programs and
  tertiary educational institutions transparent
  professional mechanisms for quality assurance
  and provision of funding and incentives to carry
  out serious scientific research, according to
  international standards.

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Challenge - 6

• If Tertiary Education is a right, as stipulated
  in the Law of Higher Education (No. 11, 1998),
  the challenge is how to ensure equity for the
  academically qualified poor for women who cannot
  leave their community and/or family to study and
  for all those who cannot move from their
  geographical locality to attend a college or a
  university elsewhere?

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Challenge - 7

• The challenge of relevance is two-fold how to
  train students in tertiary education institutions
  for ready employability in the Palestinian
  market, and how to reward a tertiary education
  system that generates critical knowledge that is
  at the cutting edge of science and artistic
  innovation, and that is necessary for the human
  development of Palestinian society?

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Challenge - 8

• The challenge in sustaining the system of
  education boils down to how to ensure the
  availability of well-trained, high quality human
  resources needed to service the system, in the
  absence of a viable economy with weak economic
  growth, and under unstable economic, political
  and social conditions, and with the clear absence
  of the necessary political will and commitment?

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Challenge - 9

• Quality staff are always looking for alternative
  or supplementary employment, due to the very low
  salaries and absent financial incentives. The
  main challenge is how to provide financial and
  other incentives in order to recruit and retain
  good human resources, and provide continuous and
  renewable opportunities for effective, life-long
  learning and cross-fertilization of the
  scientific mind.

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Challenge - 10

• Tertiary education institutions suffer from a
  serious shortage of funds. Almost all had to use
  their pension funds to cover their deficits. No
  university has an endowment fund to keep it
  going. The precarious and insecure funding base
  for tertiary education bears negatively and
  continuously on the quality of the service
  provided.

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Challenge - 11

• Trying to stay afloat, universities embarked on
  different measures to increase their revenues,
  e.g., opening new programs to compete for
  students cutting down on academic full time
  teaching staff cutting down on subscriptions for
  academic journals taking initiatives to increase
  their self-generated revenue, etc. Student
  tuition fees are very high by international
  standards, and cannot be raised at the moment.
  What alternative approaches must be considered?

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RESPONSE

• ITS UP TO US!