Conference 12: "Aligning the Outputs of Higher Education with the Needs of Society in the Arab World", Beirut, the Lebanese Republic, December 2009

Conference 12: "Aligning the Outputs of Higher Education with the Needs of Society in the Arab World", Beirut, the Lebanese Republic, December 2009

The conference's recommendations and orientations covered many topics, most notably a call for the Arab states to support partnership between universities and the economic environment, to work on involving civil society sectors in financing scientific research activities and applying their results, to complete the establishment of independent national bodies for quality assurance and academic accreditation in higher education, to prepare programmes for joint cooperation between Arab universities and scientific research centres, and to work on raising the percentage of gross domestic product allocated to scientific research. The recommendations called on ALECSO to prepare an Arab guidance manual that facilitates the reading of academic certificates and study records issued by Arab higher education institutions in order to ease student mobility, to establish a mechanism for coordination among the national bodies for quality assurance and academic accreditation in the Arab states and to help exchange expertise and harmonise standards, and to prepare a database on resident and expatriate Arab minds and propose a plan to benefit from them.