Conference 11: "The Globalization of Higher Education: Arab Identity and the Imperative of Development", Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, November 2007

Conference 11: "The Globalization of Higher Education: Arab Identity and the Imperative of Development", Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, November 2007

The conference's orientations and recommendations considered numerous topics, the most important of which were: strengthening the independence of the scientific and knowledge mission of higher education institutions and increasing the scope of academic, organizational, administrative, and financial freedoms of those institutions to provide opportunities for development and creativity within the framework of preserving identity and openness to the world; calling for the adoption of quality assurance systems and information and communication technology as fundamental pillars of the modern higher education system; giving attention to the Arabic language as one of the basic requirements for refining the scientific and cultural character of the researcher and student, supporting the concerned parties to carry out this role, placing the Arabic language among the components of the international informatics system, and enhancing its status as a language of research and teaching; working to establish an information network linking higher education institutions in the Arab states; calling on Arab states that have not completed the establishment of national quality assurance bodies to take the initiative to establish them; calling on ministries of higher education and scientific research in the Arab states to allocate scholarships for Palestinian students, particularly those residing in Arab Jerusalem; in addition to calling on Arab states to benefit from the services of the Regional Center for Information and Communication Technology to be established in the Kingdom of Bahrain.