Middle East

Regional DIES Conference

    After several conferences in Germany and other countries (Sofia, Nairobi, Chile, Berlin, Bonn) another DIES Conference on the "Management of Higher Education and Scientific Research – Towards a joint higher education area in the Arab World" was held in Cairo in July 2006. More than 200 participants from the Middle East attended the event to inform themselves about the topic of quality assurance in the Arab higher education area. International experts came from UNDP, UNESCO, World Bank, the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MoHESR) Yemen, and other organisations. The conference was held in cooperation with the Arab Council for Graduate Studies and Scientific Research of the University of Cairo and the DAAD Branch Office in Cairo. The Egyptian Education Minister opened the conference and high-ranking national experts presented, for example, the forthcoming foundation of an Egyptian accreditation council. Representatives from the German side included, among others, the president of the RWTH Aachen, Prof. Rauhut, and Dr. Schade, the former managing director of the German Accreditation Council. In view of her background as an expert in the DAAD World Bank project on Developing an Accreditation System in Yemen" Dr. Schade and Aziz Alhadi, HEDP Coordinator at the MoHESR, informed the participants about quality assurance in the context of the Bologna Process and about international approaches to supporting a quality assurance system and establishing an accreditation system in Yemen.

 

Egypt

   The first part of the training course on "Proposal Writing for International Research Projects", held in Alexandria, Egypt, from 9 to 14 November 2007, addressed DAAD alumni from Egypt, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian Territories and counted more than 30 participants. The team of trainers was made up of experts from the University of Applied Sciences Berlin, the Universities of Potsdam and Kassel, as well as from the Egyptian Education Ministry. The second part was held at the end of May 2008.
   From 17 to 19 October 2009 a DIES Seminar on "Managing Quality Assurance Agencies and Quality Assurance University Centers in the Arab Region" in cooperation with the Arab Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ANQAHE) was organised at Cairo, Egypt.

 

Syria

A DIES Seminar on the topic of ”Syria towards Bologna?" was held in Damascus, Syria, in January 2007 in cooperation with the Syrian Higher Education Ministry, the University of Damascus, the Bologna Project of the German Rectors’ Conference (HRK), the European Network for Quality Assurance (ENQA) as well as German universities.  A one-week follow-up event for coordinators of pilot self-evaluations in the fields of agriculture, business administration and architecture were held in Damascus at the beginning of June 2006. Besides the various in-depth topics in the three working groups, the relationship between university and ministry (autonomy vs. control), in particular, was discussed in view of the higher education policy situation in Syria, when defining guidelines and procedures for assessing and assuring quality; another controversial topic related to the different roles and interests of public and private universities with regards to acceptance of and funding for accreditation and quality assurance measures.

Yemen

On behalf of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Yemen (MoHESR), a DIES seminar on the topic of "Yemen towards Excellence. Quality in Higher Education: Self-Evaluation is Key" was held at the University of Sana'a from 9 to 11 September 2007. Further cooperation partners were the University of Hamburg (Asia-Africa Institute) and the University of Sana’a. Consolidating workshop topics, such as on Business Administration and Engineering / Urban Planning were defined as pilot areas for preparing Yemeni participants to use self-evaluation methods in the respective field. The workshops were chaired by an international team of experts from the University of Applied Sciences Weihenstephan, the Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, the University of Rostock as well as the Maastricht School of Management (Programme (*.pdf)). The content was coordinated by Dr. Schade, former managing director of the German Accreditation Council and DAAD key expert in the World Bank project "Developing an Accreditation System". The MoHESR co-financed the seminar with funds from the World Bank project "Higher Education Development Program" (HEDP).

Date: 2009-12-03

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