2015
Conference 15: "Financing Higher Education in the Arab World", Alexandria, the Arab Republic of Egypt, December 2015
The conference addressed the topic of financing higher education based on a descriptive and analytical approach, and on data and comparisons between the experiences, policies and models adopted by Arab countries in financing higher education within a context of interconnected and influential demographic, social and economic changes, to affirm the scale of the challenges, stakes and difficulties facing the higher education system with regard to financing in all Arab countries, and to show that despite the many attempts to find sources for financing universities, and despite the positive results achieved in some Arab countries in this field, attaining the missing equation remains elusive — the equation of enabling higher education institutions in the Arab world to provide quality university educational services and to guarantee the principle of equal opportunity, the right to learn, and equity for all in access to university.
The conference approved the formation of a follow-up committee comprising: the State chairing the fifteenth (15th) Conference, the two States of the vice-chairs, the State hosting the sixteenth (16th) Conference, and ALECSO, to draw up practical mechanisms and timetables for implementing the recommendations issued by this conference.
It issued a number of recommendations addressed to Arab countries regarding making data, statistics and information available in order to establish indicators for measuring the performance and outcomes of education and scientific research and measuring their returns. It also called on them to diversify the sources of financing higher education and scientific research through: educational and research endowments (waqf), the contribution of institutions of the civic and private sectors, rationalizing free education, increasing the productive contribution of universities, scientific and research chairs, graduates' contributions, and attention to and regulation of digital education programmes. It called on Arab countries to exchange expertise in the field of financing governance and good practices; called on Arab countries to exchange expertise, students and professors among successful Arab universities and academies; and called on Arab countries to support the steadfastness of the Palestinian people and to protect its educational and university institutions from the repeated Israeli violations that have affected students, professors and infrastructure, and to condemn them, through the following: increasing scholarships allocated to Palestinian students in Arab universities, benefiting from Palestinian professors and from the expertise accumulated in Palestine in the fields of e-learning, open education and distance education, and encouraging cooperation between Palestinian universities and Arab universities. It also called on Arab countries to support the efforts of the Somali government in advancing the education and scientific research sectors through supporting the donors' conference sponsored by the State of Kuwait and the ALECSO and ISESCO organizations.
It called on ALECSO to prepare an in-depth study on educational and research endowments and ways to spread the culture of this financing; called on the organization to organize a workshop on "Higher Education and the Dissemination of Enlightened Thought to Counter Extremism" in cooperation with the Ministry of Higher Education of the Arab Republic of Egypt and in coordination with Arab countries; and called on ALECSO to review the name of the proposed council so that it aligns with the tasks assigned to it, in accordance with the Arab Strategy for Scientific Research, Technology and Innovation, to amend the proposed statute in line with the tasks and objectives of the proposed committee, and to authorize the organization's Executive Council to adopt the draft statute of the committee after verifying the completion of the drafting.
